


Breaking the Ice

by Melanie_b



Series: Breaking The Ice [1]
Category: Kabby fandom, The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergent, Cryosleep, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:41:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 35
Words: 93,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24733312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melanie_b/pseuds/Melanie_b
Summary: In order to survive the oxygen crisis, the inhabitants of the Ark are forced to go into cryosleep in a century-old cryosuite which has never been operational. As luck would have it, the first cryopod to malfunction is Marcus Kane's, and as luck would have it, the second is Abby Griffin's. Faced with the prospect of spending the rest of their lives alone with just each other for company, will they be able to overcome their differences?
Relationships: Abby Griffin & Marcus Kane, Abby Griffin/Marcus Kane
Series: Breaking The Ice [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2091267
Comments: 489
Kudos: 351





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is VERY loosely based on the film Passengers, except that Marcus doesn't wake Abby up on purpose, because he would never do something like that.

Something’s wrong. 

Marcus Kane has never known cold like this. It’s a cold so cold that it burns. His lungs scream with pain with every breath he takes, the freezing air making his chest ache before rushing back out of his body, only slightly less icy, over his tongue and dry, chapped lips. He braces himself for the next onslaught as his body instinctively draws in another breath of glacial air. 

Something’s wrong.

He tries to open his eyes, but his lashes are frozen together, and the light that penetrates them is minimal. He can see shapes like snowflakes, but he can’t feel anything against his skin; he’s so cold his nerves have long since succumbed to numbness. He tries to wiggle his toes, and the flash of pins and needles that shoots through his foot is shocking; an unmistakable symptom of sensation returning to previously frozen extremities. 

Suddenly he understands. 

He shouldn’t be thinking. He shouldn’t be feeling pins and needles in his toes. He shouldn’t be able to make a conscious decision in his brain to clench his fists, or to run his tongue over his dry lips, or to resist his body’s instinct and hold his breath against the next wave of frigid air. 

Something is  _ very  _ wrong. 

His cryopod is malfunctioning. The temperature has risen; he’s no longer frozen, and he can feel and move and think. But if the temperature doesn’t increase quickly, thawing him completely, he’s going to die of hypothermia. 

_ He has to get out of here.  _ Shearing panic surges through him, and he tries to lift his hands to the glass casing. They don’t cooperate. He can’t lift them, he’s paralysed by the cold and his arms remain stubbornly by his side. His lungs have stopped aching, but that’s because he’s no longer breathing. The panic is pressing on him like a suffocating weight on his chest. He gasps for air and this time it’s slightly less gelid. The temperature is rising, slowly. 

_ Too slowly, _ he thinks. He knows he doesn’t have long to live if his pod doesn’t open soon. His eyes are open now and the proximity of the glass is making him feel claustrophobic, which only increases the panic swirling within him. There’s no way of opening the cryopod from the inside, so he’s trapped in here unless it opens on its own. 

Blackness overcomes him, and he closes his eyes. He’s so tired, achingly tired, which he finds strange since he’s been in cryosleep for goodness knows how long. He slips in and out of consciousness, but suddenly an alarm goes off on his head and his eyes fly open. He mustn’t sleep; sleep is hypothermia. Sleep is death.  _ Fight it _ he thinks. He blinks and moves his hands, and this time he’s relieved to find that he can lift his arms to touch the cryopod. 

Hope swells inside him. If he can move, he can try and get the pod open. He pushes and pushes, but his muscles burn as they flood with lactic acid, and he lets his arms fall back by his side with an anguished groan. 

Then there’s a whoosh, and a click, and a blast of warm air which feels like the sun although it’s probably not much above freezing, and suddenly the glass is moving away from his face. He stares in shock, hardly daring to believe his eyes. The pod opens and he tries to sit up, but his muscles are still reluctant to move and the most he can do is raise his head a couple of inches. He takes a deep breath, and tries again, and this time he props himself up on his elbows, although the effort leaves him breathless. 

He’s terrified the pod will close again, so he throws himself to the right, gathering enough momentum to force his body out of the cryopod and onto the floor. He crashes the two feet to the ground and lands in a heap, and it feels like every bone in his body has shattered. Above him, he hears another whoosh and click, and the cryopod closes again. 

He doesn’t know how long he stays there. He’s shivering, and a cold sweat forms on his skin.  _ Cryosickness, _ he thinks. He’s grateful he can see. Blindness is a common symptom, although it’s usually only temporary. He needs a doctor, but the only two doctors on the Ark are in cryosleep.

He scans the rows and rows of cryopods, and it occurs to him that maybe his isn’t the only one that has malfunctioned. He’s able to stand although his legs are shaking, and he makes his way unsteadily down the cryosuite towards console. The low oxygen means that it feels like he’s running a marathon, and he has to stop to rest his aching muscles, but at least the effort is warming him up. 

A glance at the console tells him that the date is January 2153. He’s been in cryo for just over three years out of the fifty they had planned. It hits him like a punch in the gut that he’s never going to get to Earth. By the time the others get out of cryo he’ll be long dead, and the thought makes him feel empty inside. Is there anyone who would miss him anyway? He’s never been close to anyone really, never been in love or been loved. The only thing he’s ever wanted is to ensure the survival of the human race. It’s a bitter kind of irony, he thinks, that he may have to spend the rest of his days alone, making sure everyone else stays in cryo as long as possible.

He manages to get to his quarters, and turns on the shower. He’s still shaking with cold, but the water is boiling thanks to the solar panels, and he stays under the shower until his fingers are wrinkled and the iciness has fled from his bones. He dries quickly and then wraps himself in six blankets and curls up on the bed, and as the shakes subside and his temperature rises, he finally gives in to the sweet oblivion of sleep. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3 years 4 months earlier

Abby opened the classroom door and slipped inside, trying to stay out of sight so as not to disturb the lesson in progress. Charles Pike was pacing at the front, pausing every now and then to survey the unruly kids before him. This group of teenage prisoners had been entrusted with the biggest mission in the history of the Ark; that of going to the ground, to see if it was survivable. They didn’t know that, of course, and it was Pike’s job to prepare them to survive alone on a hostile planet, without actually telling them they would soon be trying to survive on a hostile planet. 

“Water, food, shelter,” he repeated. “The human body can’t survive more than three days without water so finding a source would be your priority. Mr Collins, can you tell me the primary water sources on Earth.”

“Collecting rainwater,” repeated Finn. “Rivers, springs, wells.” His attitude was bored, like this was kids’ stuff, which it was, but Abby knew how difficult it was to get people to remember to drink even when they had free access to abundant clean water. From the moment the kids arrived on the ground there would be so many distractions, so many new and interesting things to discover that staying hydrated was likely to be forgotten until it was too late. 

“Mr Jordan, can you add anything else to Mr Collins’ list,” Pike continued, turning to look at the tall lanky kid with the goggles on his head. 

“Desalinated sea water,” said Jasper, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “If you happen to land near the coast.”

“Right. Any other sources?” He looked around the room, and his eyes met Abby’s over the kids’ heads. He gave her a small nod, enough to acknowledge her presence but without drawing the kids’ attention to her.

“Urine,” said Murphy with a snigger, and the class erupted into laughter and cries of “Oh yuk!” “Gross!”. Pike waited for the outcry to subside and then leaned forward on his desk, looking at them intensely. 

“You can laugh, but you may have to,” he said grimly. “Recycled urine is a perfectly safe water source.”

“Mr Pike, Sir,” said a quiet, intelligent looking kid. “Do we drink our own, or each others’?”

Laughter rippled around the class again, followed by muttered comments of “Bags not drinking Murphy’s,” and “You drink your own stinking pee Monty!” Pike let them have their fun for a moment and then banged on the desk with his hand, calling the class to order. 

“If you haven’t drunk in four days, you’ll drink whatever urine recyc you can get your hands on. And yes, that may well be Mr Murphy’s.” Murphy rolled his eyes but Pike ignored him and went on with his lesson. ”And remember, by the time you feel thirsty, dehydration is already setting in. Miss Blake,” he turned his attention to the striking looking girl with thick straight hair in the front row. “First symptoms of dehydration please.”

“Tiredness, dizziness, light-headedness and headaches,” repeated the girl. “Cracked lips and dry eyes. Dark yellow and infrequent urination.”

In response Pike glanced at Abby, and the kids all turned to follow his gaze. “Is that correct, Dr Griffin?”

“Perfectly correct,” said Abby with a smile. “It’s also important to note that the less you drink, the less you urinate, so if your only water source urine, it’s a vicious cycle, so to speak. So, it’s important to drink as much urine as possible, in order to produce as much urine as possible for others to drink.”

The kids looked at her in solemn horror, and she turned to Pike. “I need Octavia Blake, Harper McIntyre, and Zoe Monroe, for medical check-ups, if that’s okay, Charles.”

The girls got up, relieved to be escaping the lesson from hell about drinking each other’s urine, and filed out of the door. Abby followed them after flashing Charles Pike a bright smile of thanks. 

…………..

Ten piles of ten medical records sat on the desk in Abby’s office, one for each of the one hundred kids from the skybox being sent to the ground. She and Jackson had carried out medical examinations on each one, measuring height, weight, pulse, blood pressure, and doing comprehensive blood tests. The data would be fed into the system and connected to the wristbands which would provide essential information about their physical conditions once they were on the ground.

The kids had been in surprisingly good spirits, excited at being allowed out of the skybox for the extra Earth Skills lessons and curious about the medical checks. Abby admired their strength of character when the only future they could look forward to was being sucked out of an airlock the day they turned eighteen. That’s if they didn’t all die of oxygen deprivation before that, but the kids didn’t know anything about the problems with the CO₂ scrubbers. Nobody did, the council had seen to that when they’d floated Jake for threatening to go public with the information.

She picked up a file from the top of one of the piles, that of the only person still to undergo the medical examination. Abby could probably complete half of the information from memory anyway. Height one metre sixty-five. Weight fifty-five kilos. Hair blonde, eyes blue like her dad’s. Clarke had been in solitary since Jake had been floated. She ran her fingers over the name on the front of the file. Age seventeen years eleven months and one week. She had three weeks until she was up for review for a crime she hadn’t committed but would likely be floated for. Sending her daughter to the ground was an eleventh hour attempt to give Clarke at least a chance at survival. 

It didn’t make it any easier though. Her scientist brain told her Clarke had a better chance of survival on Earth than on the Ark, but as a mother her heart was breaking at the thought of sending her off into the unknown. 

She placed Clarke’s file back on the pile and stood up wearily. It had been a long day, and the decreased oxygen levels on the Ark were taking their toll on everyone. She took off her stethoscope and washed her hands before heading out the door towards the council chambers. 

……………………...

When she arrived the rest of the council was already assembled, but they were used to her being late by now; as head of medical she often couldn’t just drop everything and leave what she was doing to keep to strict schedules. She excused herself and took her seat, although Kane pursed his lips and gave her a disapproving glance. Abby ignored him, turning her attention to Jaha, who was running through the daily report from engineering on the state of the CO₂ scrubbers. The situation was bleak, but they all knew that. When he’d finished there was a solemn silence, and then he turned to Abby.

“Abby, can you give us an update on the wristbands?” 

“The last batch will be ready the day after tomorrow,” she answered. “Then we can start fitting them on the kids and connecting them to the system.”

“Why the delay?” asked Kane with a frown. 

“Two batches were faulty,” Abby explained. “They had to be scrapped. But Sinclair assures me he knows what the problem was and it won’t happen again.”

“Has he submitted a report?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at him in annoyance. “I think his priority is getting the rest of the wristbands ready.”

“Nevertheless, a report needs to be made for the wasted materials.”

“If we don’t get the wristbands made and the kids down to the ground we are  _ all _ going to be wasted materials, Kane.” She knew she was being petty but his attention to insignificant details riled her. Who the hell cared about reports?

“Abby - “

“I’ll ask him to submit the report as soon as he’s finished the wristbands. Just in case there are any more faulty ones. We wouldn’t want the report to be incomplete, would we?” She glared at him and he nodded, satisfied with her answer.

“Moving on,” said Jaha. “Have all the kids undergone the medical exam?” 

“All except one. My daughter.” Her words nearly caught in her throat. “Since she’s not participating in the earth skills lessons, I’ll need to request she’s brought to medical from the skybox.”

“Very well. I’ll arrange for that first thing tomorrow morning,” Jaha agreed at once. “Clarke will be a valuable addition to the group, Abby.”

“She knows too much,” said Kane. “I’d like to propose a vote to keep her on the Ark.”

_ “What?”  _ Abby couldn’t believe her ears. “Kane, that’s ridiculous. Yes, Clarke knows about the oxygen crisis here on the Ark, but  _ all  _ of the kids need to be fully informed. They need to know that the survival of the human race depends on their survival on the ground.”

“We hadn’t planned on telling them,” Jaha said, stroking his chin. “That information is classified.”

Abby turned to him. “Thelonious, I strongly believe that telling the kids the stakes will maximise their chances of survival. If earth is survivable, their decisions down there will have consequences for all of us.” It baffled her that they could even consider keeping the kids in the dark about their mission to the ground. Jake had been floated because Thelonious feared a riot if the people of the Ark knew their predicament, but once they were on the ground there was little harm the kids could do with the information. 

Kane shook his head in disbelief. “Abby, you’re giving these kids too much credit. They’re delinquents. Criminals.”

“They’re young people who made a mistake, and who are now being given a chance to make things right.”

Kane threw her a dismissive smirk. “We’re not expecting them to build a society for us down there.” He leaned forward, a vaguely patronising expression on his face which never failed to rile her. “As soon as we know it’s survivable, we all go down.”

“So they’re just guinea pigs? Lab rats?” Abby was seething now. “Is that how you see them, Kane?”

He stared at her, a muscle twitching in his cheek, and she knew she’d hit a nerve. “No,” he said at last. “But we’re not asking them to do anything more than find out if earth is survivable. That’s all.”

“So –” she began but Jaha interrupted her.

“That’s enough,” he said sharply, and she clamped her mouth shut. “Clarke goes to the ground with the other members of the skybox, and for  _ now,”  _ he looked around at them all gravely, “the decision to not give the kids classified information stands. Is there any other business?” 

There wasn’t, so the meeting was adjourned and Abby made a hasty exit. She stopped by medical to check on some patients and then fled back to the quarters she’d once shared with her husband and daughter but now inhabited alone. She let herself in, closing the door behind her with a heartfelt sigh. She generally tried to spend as little time as possible in this room, because here her loss became a physical ache and she couldn’t stop the grief welling behind her eyelids, and she often ended up crying herself sick in the bed she and Jake had shared. 

Tonight, though, she took comfort in the memories of her husband and daughter. She hated how much Kane got to her, how he seemed to make a point of needling her until her blood pressure was shooting up and her fingernails were cutting into her palms. Jake always knew how to talk her down with hugs and kisses when she got home from council meetings wild and looking for something to kill. He always knew how to bring a smile to her face and lightness to her heart. Now he was gone, and Abby didn’t smile very much anymore. One thing was for sure, she thought as she climbed into the big bed alone. Once they got to the ground she was moving as far away as possible from Marcus Kane. Earth was a big place, and hopefully she’d never need to see him again.

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2153

When he wakes up he’s burning and shivering and drenched in sweat. He drags himself out of bed, but falls to his knees and vomits on the floor, streams of vomit, and he wonders how it’s possible when he hasn’t eaten anything in three years. When he’s stopped retching he stands, shakily, and makes his way to medical where he finds a thermometer which tells him he’s running a fever of 103°. He opens cupboards and drawers, pulling everything out in search of antipyretic pills to bring his fever down, and when he can’t find any he sinks to the floor, his back against the cold metal cabinets. The room is spinning and he closes his eyes to stop the dizziness, and he must pass out briefly because when he comes around he can hear voices.

Voices? He’s alone on the Ark, isn’t he?

He strains to listen. They grow louder and he calls out, desperate for them to hear him, but his voice is too weak. 

“Help me.” 

He doesn’t even know if he made a sound or not so he tries again.

“Help. Me. Please.”

The voices stop and then he hears footsteps. Somebody’s here, he thinks in relief. Somebody’s coming. He nearly laughs, but he doesn’t have the strength and it comes out as a whimper.

Suddenly someone is in front of him, bending over him, and he can make out two big brown eyes looking at him in concern. 

“Kane? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in cryo.”

He knows that voice, that deep and throaty voice he’s argued with so many times across the meeting table. 

“Abby.” The relief he feels is indescribable. They might have butted heads every day, but he has absolute faith in her as a doctor and he knows he’s in good hands now. “I’m sick.” He feels a soft hand touching his cheek, then his forehead, and he leans into it, craving the comfort. 

“You poor thing. It’s cryosickness. Your cryopod malfunctioned. Come on, let’s get you up.” Strong hands slip under his arms, and he does his best to heave himself to his feet, clinging to her small frame for support. She helps him onto the bed and he lies back, closing his eyes in relief.

She disappears temporarily from view. A minute later she’s there again, holding some pills and a glass of water. “Here, this will make you feel better,” she says with a smile, and he thinks that that smile could heal a thousand ills on its own. He takes it gratefully and swallows the pills. The water tastes of rust and he wrinkles his nose in disgust.

“Tastes bad,” he says, and she chuckles. 

“Everything tastes bad after three years in cryo.”

“How long have you been awake?” he asks roughly.

“A couple of months. There are a few of us awake,” she says. “The cryopods aren’t working properly and we woke up one by one. None of us had cryosickness this bad though. You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” he says thinly, but he’s beginning to feel a little better. The fog in his head is clearing and his fever is subsiding. He thinks it might also be because Abby is holding his hand and smiling at him, and even though he’d never admit it to her, it’s not unpleasant. It’s such a contrast to the defiant set of her mouth and flashing eyes he usually sees in their interactions. 

“How are the oxygen levels?” he asks suddenly and she frowns.

“Shhh. You need to rest. There’s time enough to worry about oxygen levels when you’re well again.” Her thumb caresses the back of his hand, quelling the nausea in his stomach and the tremors in his bones.

“Okay,” he agrees, and she raises an eyebrow in surprise. 

“Well well well,” she remarks. “Marcus Kane agreeing with me. That’s a first.”

He smiles despite himself. She never misses a chance to needle him, he’s used to that by now, but today her tone is teasing instead of sniping. Maybe things are going to be different now, he thinks. 

“Can I get you anything?” she asks.

“I’m thirsty. Some water would be good. Even though it tastes nasty.”

“Okay.” She lets go of his hand and gets up, and then she’s back again with a glass. She holds it to his lips and he drinks thirstily. 

It tastes really bad. He nearly gags, but he’s thirsty, so thirsty that he gulps it down, but suddenly his throat begins to feel tight.

“Abby!” he gasps, and tries to pull the glass away from his mouth, but she just smiles and says “Shhh.”

The rancid water is still pouring into his mouth and he gags and spits. He can’t breathe, he needs air and he knocks her hand away in desperation. The glass flies out of her hand and shatters on the floor.

“What the hell is that?” he gasps, clawing at his throat. “I can’t breathe, I think it’s poisoned.”

“It is poisoned, Kane,” she says sweetly. “We can’t waste oxygen on people like you.”

“What?” His heart shatters at her words. 

“How many people have you floated, Kane? Do you really think you deserve to survive?” This comes out as a hiss, her eyes narrowing accusingly. In the back of his mind, something doesn’t make sense. She was on the council, she was involved in sentencing people too. 

“Abby,” he stutters, still trying to force air into his lungs. “This is madness, please –” he breaks off, struggling for breath, and a tear slides down his cheek. “Why don’t you just float me, if there’s not enough air…”

Her face is flushed red now, and there’s a slightly wild look in her eyes. He’s desperate, he can’t breathe and everything is going black.

“You floated my husband, Kane. You put my daughter in solitary. She was innocent.” There are tears in her eyes now, and his oxygen deprived brain struggles to recall the events. It had been a council decision, but he had voted in favour. He’ll never forget the look of absolute loathing he’d seen on her face, but he’d had no choice. The knowledge Jake and Clarke had about the Ark’s failing life support was too dangerous to risk it going public.

“She was innocent!” she spat. “She didn’t deserve to be punished for her father’s crime!”

_ It wasn’t like that, _ he tries to say, but the words don’t come out, his throat is too tight. He closes his eyes, and it feels like he’s being sucked into a void where he can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t feel...

He wakes up with a gasp, sucking air into his lungs, his heart pounding in his chest. Disoriented, he looks around, trying to work out where he is, but he’s in his quarters, on the bed still wrapped up in the blankets. There’s no vomit on the floor, and he doesn’t have a fever, but he’s still shaking from the shock of the nightmare.  _ What the hell, _ he thinks to himself, running a hand over his face. He lies there, breathless, waiting for his heart to stop thudding, Abby’s words still ringing in his ears.

He stands up. He’s sweating a little but he’s steady on his feet as he hurries to medical.

There’s no one there, no pills pulled out of cupboards, no smashed glass on the floor. It was a nightmare, he tells himself, just a nightmare. He doesn’t know whether to feel relieved that Abby’s wrath towards him had just been a dream, or disappointed that there isn’t anyone else awake after all. He goes back to the cryosuite and finds Abby’s cryopod. She’s still inside and it’s working perfectly, and he crouches down and peers in at her perfect profile. He stares at her for a moment, then rests his hand against the glass. “I’m sorry,” he whispers at last. 

…………….

He needs to keep busy, so he goes to systems control and begins to run a full system analysis. The situation is still dire as far as sustaining the population of the Ark is concerned, but for him alone the oxygen is sufficient, since the people in cryosleep need minimal oxygen. 

He spends the rest of the day tinkering in the cryosuite. Nobody else’s pod seems to have malfunctioned, and he’s determined to find out what went wrong with his. He wants to go back into cryo, because the thought of spending the rest of his life alone doesn’t bear thinking about. He may not be a very social person, but he doesn’t particularly enjoy his own company either. He manages to activate an alarm system which will warn him of any further cryopod malfunctions. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if it happens but at least he can be there, and he might be able to stop it and reverse the thawing process. He tries over and over to restart his own pod but it stays defiantly warm and in the end he loses his temper, and slams his fist against the glass control panel with a yell of anger.

It shatters and he stands staring at it in shock, blood pouring from his fingers.  _ Fuck.  _ Now he has to replace that before he can even think about getting the cryopod to work again. He’s in a foul mood now, and he storms off in the direction of the mess hall with only one thing on his mind.

Enough moonshine to drink himself into oblivion. 

  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3 years 4 months earlier

As Jaha had promised, Clarke was brought to medical from the skybox the next morning. She ran to Abby and threw her arms around her in a hug that knocked the wind out of her. 

“What’s going on, Mom?” Clarke whispered in fearful tones.

“You’re being sent to the ground, Clarke,” Abby replied, trying to inject as much excitement into her voice and expression as she could. “To see if it’s survivable.”

Clarke drew back to look at Abby, disbelief on her face. “What? No! It’s not! How can it be?” Her voice rose in panic. “It’s because of the oxygen crisis, isn’t it? They’re reducing population.” 

“You’re not being executed, Clarke, but the rules about being reviewed at eighteen have changed. This gives you a chance to live.” She desperately wanted her daughter to believe her, because she needed to believe it herself. 

“Who else is going?” asked Clarke, her eyes falling on the piles of medical records on the desk. 

“All one hundred of you in lock-up,” said Abby. “Listen to me. Your instincts will tell you to look after everyone, like your father. But please be careful. I can’t lose you too.” Her voice thickened as she said this, and Clarke nodded mutely. Abby touched her hands to her daughter’s beautiful face, trying to memorise every detail, from the small mole on her lip to her crystal blue eyes and soft rosy skin. “I love you so much,” she said through her tears, and Clarke hugged her again. 

“I need to do a full medical on you,” Abby said with a smile which was braver than she felt. “And the data will be connected to wristbands you’re all going to wear to the ground, so that we can monitor you. We’ll have contact from the moment you set foot on the ground.”

She passed Clarke a wristband and Clarke took it, turning it over in her hands. “This looks painful,” she said with a grimace. “Who designed them?”

“I did, but don’t worry, you won’t feel a thing once they’re on.”

Clarke looked at her in admiration. “This is amazing,” she said. “I just wish I wasn’t so scared.”

“I know, honey,” said Abby softly. She didn’t know what else to say, so she proceeded with the medical, weighing and measuring Clarke and then taking blood samples. Neither of them spoke much. As soon as Abby had finished, the guards came to take Clarke back to lock up. Clarke hugged her mother again, so tightly that the guards had to physically separate them. Abby watched as her daughter was led away in handcuffs, her heart sinking. 

A knock at the door broke into her thoughts and her heart lifted ever so slightly to see the dark almond-shaped eyes and warm smile of her best friend Callie. 

“Hey, darling,” said Callie with a smile, her eyes scanning Abby’s face and grasping the situation immediately. “Come here,” she said softly and she took Abby in her arms. “It’s gonna be okay. Clarke’s gonna be okay.” 

Abby clung to her friend and tried to stem the flow of tears. “It’s so hard,” she whispered. 

“I know.” Callie stroked her hair, waiting until Abby regained her composure a little. “Have you finished all the medicals?” 

“Yep. Clarke was the last.” She gestured to the medical records on her desk. 

“Jacapo was looking for you, by the way. There’s a problem with the wristbands.” 

Abby groaned. “Not again. Kane is going to love this.” She rubbed her forehead wearily. “I swear he gets off on things going to shit for me.”

“Abby, that’s not true. He’s just a little over-zealous. He wants things done by the book.” 

Dear Callie, she always saw the best in everyone. It was one of the things Abby loved about her. Abby pursed her lips, fiddling with Jake’s ring. which hung on a chain around her neck. “Hmmm. If you say so. Okay, I’d better go and see Sinclair. Pray for me.” She squeezed Callie’s hand and headed out of medical, but as she got to the door she paused and turned back to her friend with a raised eyebrow. “Jacapo?” No one ever used Sinclair’s first name, he was always just Sinclair, but she’d heard Callie use it a couple of times now. The faint blush that crossed her friend’s face told Abby everything she needed to know. 

  
  


…………...

  
  


Down on Mecha Station, engineering was hectic, the air warm and heavy with the smell of oil. Abby picked out the dark curls of Jacapo Sinclair bent over a work bench, and made her way between the machinery, stepping over legs that stuck out at all angles from underneath machines and engine parts. 

Luckily, the problem with the wrist bands was a non-problem, just a query about the number required in each of the different sizes. Some of the kids in the skybox were as young as twelve, and clearly they’d need a smaller wristband. 

She breathed a visible sigh of relief, and Sinclair gave her a warm smile over the top of his welding goggles. 

“Everything’s fine Abby. We’ve got this.”

“Great. Thank you. Oh, Kane asked for a report about the wasted materials in the two faulty batches of wristbands.”

“I managed to reuse nearly everything. I can’t see it’s necessary to put in a report.”

“Sinclair, please. Just write the report. I don’t need any more stress from Kane.”

“Consider it done,” Sinclair replied with a wink. He had been one of Jake’s closest friends, and as such he’d do anything for her.

A shout and a scuffle from the corner caught their attention, and their heads snapped to the right in time to see one of the workmen pushing his way towards them, his face a livid red.

“There she is! She’s the one to ask! She knows what’s going on!”

Abby opened her mouth to speak, to calm the man, but in an instant he’d reached her, and wrapped his arm around her neck. She froze in terror as she felt the cold blade of a knife against her throat. 

“Tell me what’s going on!” he yelled. “You have no right to keep us in the dark!” His breath was sour with moonshine and panic flooded her veins. This man was drunk and angry and holding a knife to her throat. She tried to speak.

“Nothing’s going on,” she gasped, but he only tightened his grip on her. 

Sinclair was on his feet, his eyes panicking but his voice reassuring. “Ridley, put the knife down. Hurting Doctor Griffin is not going to achieve anything. You don’t want to do this.”

“Her husband was floated so he wouldn’t talk,” Ridley growled in her ear. “She must know something!”

“That’s not true,” Abby lied in desperation but Ridley just pushed the knife even harder against her neck. 

“STOP LYING!!” he roared, and Abby winced in pain as the knife cut into her skin. She hardly dared to breathe for fear the knife would slip in further. She stared out of the window above them, focusing on the blue-green of Earth. The guards would be here any moment to take Ridley out with a tranquiliser gun. She just had to stay calm until then. 

She could feel blood trickling down her neck. Sinclair came closer, trying to connect with Ridley.

“Give me the knife,” he said quietly, reaching out towards them. “Let Doctor Griffin go, Ridley. This is not going to end well and you know it.”

“End well? End WELL?” Ridley’s voice was verging on hysteria and Abby closed her eyes. “WE’RE ALL DYING! THE ARK IS DYING!” He was breathing heavily in her ear, and drops of spittle were hitting her cheek. He yanked her backwards towards him. “TELL US THE TRUTH! WE DESERVE TO KNOW THE TRUTH!”

“Okay,” she blurted out. “We’ll tell you the truth. Just let me go. I can’t talk to you like this.”

“Let her go, Ridley,” said Sinclair encouragingly. “If you kill her you won’t get any information out of her, and you’ll just be floated anyway. Let her go.”

Ridley seemed to consider the logic of his words, and she felt the pressure of the knife lessening on her throat. She took a tiny breath, and then another. Suddenly the knife was gone and she lurched forward as Ridley pushed her towards Sinclair. She stumbled into his arms in relief just as the guards erupted into the room, all guns pointing at Ridley’s head. 

“Are you okay?” Sinclair asked and she nodded, touching her fingers to her neck and finding blood. 

“It’s just a scratch.” Her legs were shaking and she leaned against him, grateful for his arms around her. 

“Put the knife down, Ridley!” yelled Kane’s voice, and Ridley turned to him, an evil grin on his face. He threw the knife onto the ground and it slid across the floor towards one of the guards, who picked it up. Kane nodded to the guards. “Arrest him.”

The guards moved in to arrest him, but Ridley reached into his pocket and thrust his hand into the air, holding a small remote control in his hand.

“Oh no, you don’t,” he snarled. “First we talk, or Farm Station goes boom.”

“Son of a bitch,” whispered Sinclair in Abby’s ear. “He’s got a bomb.”

The guards froze, and for the first time Abby saw Kane at a loss. A vein was throbbing on his temple and he opened his mouth and then closed it again. It would have been comical if the situation weren’t so dire.

“He’s bluffing,” he said finally. “Arrest him.”

The guards, unconvinced, remained rooted to the spot.

“Arrest him, I said!” Kane repeated, but all eyes were on Ridley, who was looking up at the window, a look of horror spreading over his face. 

“What the hell…?” he muttered, and against their better judgement all eyes followed his to the window above them, where Earth was clearly visible. 

The sight that met their eyes stunned them all.

A line of fire was slowly moving across the blue green globe, leaving the planet baron and burnt in its wake. Blue oceans and green forests became scorched red and dry as the wave of death advanced. 

They stood in shocked silence, the chaos of the previous moments forgotten, united in disbelief at the scenario unfolding before their eyes. Earth, which had been simmering in radiation for the past ninety-seven years, was somehow, inexplicably, destroying itself, burning itself up in an apocalyptic rage of fire which consumed everything in its path. 

And with it, the last remnants of hope for the survival of the human race. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to be clear, what they just witnessed happening on earth was the death wave caused by the nuclear reactors melting down that happens at the end of s4, forcing them down into the bunker to survive. In canon this happens approximately 6 months after the 100 are sent to the ground. In this reality the death wave hit 6 months earlier than in canon, before the kids were sent to the ground, because what’s 6 months when the reactors have been melting down for 97 years?


	5. Chapter 5

Kane is trying not to go crazy. He’s been alone for three months now, which would have passed in the blink of an eye back when the Ark was operational and alive with people. Now, in the dark emptiness of the derelict space station, it seems like an eternity. His days are filled with endless nothingness; nothing to do, no one to talk to, nowhere to go. The thought is driving him insane, and he knows he has to keep busy if he doesn’t want to lose his mind. He needs routine, however pointless it may be.

He wants to understand why his cryopod malfunctioned, and the only way to do that is to become an engineer. That usually takes three years’ study, but he has time on his hands. Every morning he pores over the engineering texts stored on his data pad for two or three hours, trying to wrap his head around the basic concepts of aerospace engineering. In the afternoons he rests for a couple of hours, watching some documentaries or old sports matches, and then he runs system checks and goes over the data from the CO₂ scrubbers, searching for patterns or anomalies in the hope of finding the key to increasing oxygen production. If he can increase oxygen production, he can wake people up, and he won’t be alone anymore.

In the evening he works out for fifteen minutes - not more, because it uses too much oxygen. He’s calculated that the oxygen he saves by resting in the afternoon can be used for a light work-out, which is good for the mind and the body. On good days he goes to bed early, and sleeps well, and he can almost enjoy the solitude and peace. 

On bad days, though, he struggles to keep his head above water, and it’s tempting to drink a bottle of moonshine and simply pass out wherever he is when he finishes it.

On these days the blackness of space seems to penetrate his soul, and the hopelessness is crushing. The long rows of functioning cryopods seem to be taunting him, gloating, and he asks himself for the millionth time why it had to be his that malfunctioned. It’s a subtle kind of torture, to feel so alone when he’s surrounded by hundreds of living, breathing people. Maybe this is what he deserves, he thinks. To be the guardian of the human race, to devote his life to ensuring their survival, whilst never again having the fortune to be touched by humanity. 

It’s on one of these days that The Idea first occurs to him. He’s shocked at himself for even thinking it, but once the seed is planted in his brain he can’t unthink it.

He’s trying to study his engineering texts without much success when the cryosuite alarm goes off. One of the cryopods is malfunctioning. He rushes to the controls, and starts pressing buttons in desperation. The temperature gauge stops rising and he breathes a sigh of relief, because that means he’s managed to stop the thawing process. Now he just has to make the pod freeze again, but no matter what he presses the temperature gauge doesn’t move. It’s like the pod has crashed, it’s completely unresponsive.  _ Come on,  _ he thinks in frustration. He’s panicking now, the person inside is suspended at a dangerous temperature and is going into hypothermia. He either has to continue the thawing process or make it freeze again. He has a final flash of inspiration and presses the button marked reset and then activates the pod again and to his relief (and slight disappointment) the pod begins to freeze again. 

If only someone had been there to do that for him, he thinks sadly.

And that’s when it hits him. If he activates the thawing process on one of the functioning pods, he could open it up, get the person out, press reset, and climb in himself before it freezes again. As long as he doesn’t let it thaw completely he should be able to go back into cryo and wake up in fifty years time.

The only downside is that the person whose pod he steals will die, as they will be pulled out of cryo fully frozen and left on the floor of the cryosuite. He wonders if he’d have time to float them from the nearest airlock before the pod thawed too much but he doubts it. 

On good days he knows that he could never do that, he could never take someone else’s life so that he could live. That’s not who he is, and certainly not who he wants to be. But on bad days the idea swirls around him, tempting him, until one day, or maybe night, because there’s no difference when you’re all alone in space, he finds himself poised with his finger on the thaw button of an unsuspecting Arker’s cryopod. 

Pushing this button will put an end to the aching loneliness that his life has become. He’ll fall asleep and awake instantly in fifty years’ time, go to Earth, make a new life with the people of the Ark. He can have everything he’s ever dreamed of if he can only find the courage to press this button, and murder an innocent person. 

He battles with his conscience for what might be hours, but in the end he can’t do it. His face crumples and with an anguished roar he slides to the floor, his head in his hands as sobs wrack his body. He doesn’t know how long he stays there, next to the cryopod of the person he can’t bring himself to murder, grieving for the life he’ll never have.

The black days become more and more frequent. He stops washing, and his beard is longer than ever. On these days he’s plagued by nightmares of the worst kind, where his mind plays tricks on him and his reality becomes the nightmare. He wakes up shaking, the loneliness black and heavy in his heart. The first few minutes of consciousness are blissful, as the relief that it was all just a bad dream washes over him. Then his brain resets, and it’s like waking up a second time, but this time the devastation he feels as reality kicks in is gut-wrenching.

Other days he dreams that they resolved the oxygen crisis, and the Ark is alive with people, working, living, breathing. Maybe the strangest thing of all is that he’s so deprived of human contact that he’s actually starting to look forward to the interactions with the people in his dreams. The people and situations are so real, vestiges of his life which play over and over in his mind, but in some way they bring him comfort, and when he awakes the loneliness is a little more bearable. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3 years 4 months earlier

They watched Earth burn in stunned silence for what seemed like hours, although it was probably only a matter of minutes. Kane was the first person to react, calling on the guards once again to arrest Ridley, and the rest of the room erupted into frenzied activity. Abby watched Ridley being led away in handcuffs and Kane turned to Sinclair.

“Get to Earth Monitoring,” he said briskly. “Try to find out what the hell is happening down there.” He frowned at Abby, who was still leaning against Sinclair, her bloodstained hand at her throat. “You’re hurt,” he said, his voice more gentle than she was accustomed to. “You need to get to medical. Can you walk?”

Abby nodded absently, her mind still on the destruction playing out through the window, and turned to leave for medical. She’d only taken a couple of steps before her legs gave way and she felt the corner of a workbench against her temple as she fainted to the floor.

When she came around she was being carried through throngs of people with panic-stricken faces and voices reaching hysteria pitch. She struggled to focus but her head was throbbing and her vision was foggy, and she closed her eyes against the nauseating flow of people zooming towards her and disappearing from view. She looked up at the face of the person carrying her and was surprised to see that it was Kane of all people. He glanced down at her when she stirred and said nothing.

“Put me down,” she muttered, feeling undignified. “I can walk.”

“No."

She pushed weakly against his chest. “Put me  _ down!”  _

This time he simply ignored her, and she took advantage to rest her aching head on his shoulder. She tried again. “I’m getting blood all over you,” she protested feebly. She knew she was focusing on minor details but the enormity of what had just happened was too much to think about right now.

He tutted dismissively. “As if that matters, Abby.”

She watched his expression from her unusually close viewpoint. It was a closed book as always, but from her position in his arms she could see the beads of sweat on his forehead and the vein which always stood out on his temple when he was stressed. 

“What the hell was that, Kane?” she asked and he closed his eyes briefly, letting his guard down for an instant. When he looked down at her, she could see the fear in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.” He pushed through the door of medical with his shoulder and deposited her on the closest bed. 

“Stay there,” he ordered. “Where’s Jackson?”

“He might be down on Farm,” Abby said. “We had a suspected case of strep last week.” 

Kane raised an eyebrow but said nothing. This clearly wasn’t the time to ask about reports. “Tell me where the supplies are and I’ll bring them to you. What do you need?”

“Disinfectant, adhesive dressing,” she said mechanically. “In the first drawer on the left. And a mirror would be useful.”

Kane passed her the things she asked for and then stood and watched while she cleaned herself up. Luckily it wasn’t deep and didn’t need stitches, but it was about six centimetres long, stretching from just below her ear towards the front of her neck. She shuddered at the thought of what would have happened if he’d moved the knife forwards a centimetre or two. Feeling his eyes on her, she glanced at him over the mirror.

“You should get to Earth Monitoring.”

“Are you sure? You fainted back there.” 

She lowered the mirror to look at him in surprise. His concern was as unnerving as the attack itself. 

“I’m fine. It was just shock. Go and find out what’s going on. Please.” This last added softly, as she caught sight of the frown on his face. He seemed to suddenly remember where he was, and who he was talking to, because his expression immediately neutralised, and he gave her a curt nod.

“Come straight there when you can.” 

“Okay. If you see Callie can you send her to me?” 

He gave her a small smile and a nod and headed out the door. A few minutes later the door burst open and Callie came in, panic etched on her face. 

“Abby! What the hell is happening? Earth is burning?” Her eyes fell on the blood on Abby’s neck. “What happened to you? Here, let me do that.” She took the dressing from Abby’s shaking hands and carefully dressed the wound on her neck.

“A mechanic down on Mecha went crazy. He held a knife to my throat and demanded we tell him the truth about the Ark. The people suspect something’s wrong, Callie.”

“Of course they do. They’re not stupid.” She eyed Abby suspiciously. “You want to go public with Jake’s message, don’t you?” Her hands moved to disinfect the wound on Abby’s temple and apply a dressing there too.

“The people have a right to know.”

“Kane doesn’t agree, Abby.”

“I know. But he’s not the chancellor. Come on, we need to get to Earth Monitoring. Hopefully they have some answers about what happened on Earth.”

They left medical, Abby clinging to Callie’s hand for support, and made their way to Earth Monitoring. News of the apocalypse had spread, plummeting the Ark into chaos. All around people were crying and hugging, while others simply stared into the void, unable to comprehend what was happening. In Earth Monitoring the panic was heavier but more muted. The tension could be cut with a knife. 

Jaha nodded to them as they joined the group around Sinclair, who was studying the monitors. Kane was looking over his shoulder, identical disbelieving frowns on their faces.

“A wave of destruction of this kind can only have been caused by a nuclear explosion,” Sinclair was saying. “Which means only one thing.” They all looked at each other, nobody wanting to put into words the truth that was staring them in the face. It was Callie who spoke.

“There were people down there. Earth has been survivable the whole time.”

A heavy silence followed her words as they contemplated this revelation. People had survived the first apocalypse, and had been living on Earth for the past ninety-seven years. On  _ Earth,  _ in the fresh air, and sunshine. Maybe they even had houses and jobs. It was everything the people of the Ark had ever dreamed of, and it was a cruel twist of fate that it was the destruction of this civilisation which had led them to understand that it had existed at all. In the moment their dreams were crushed forever they realised that they needn’t have been only dreams all along.

Abby felt the room spinning and she leaned against Callie for support. What did this mean for the hundred? What did this mean for her daughter? What did this mean for  _ all  _ of them?

“We could have been living down there all this time,” said Jaha, his voice raw with regret. He left the group to stare out of the window at the brown, burnt planet that could have been Mars if they didn’t know better.

“We could,” said Sinclair. “But we’d all be dead now anyway.”

“And we’re not,” put in Kane. “So there’s that.”

Abby couldn’t argue with him.

“There is another possible explanation for the apocalypse,” Sinclair went on. 

Jaha turned to him. “There is?”

“Fallout from nuclear reactors which have been melting down for the last ninety-seven years. If they all melted down at the same time, it could have caused a wave of fire like that.”

“What are the chances of that happening?” Abby queried. “All of them melting down at exactly the same time?”

“I have no idea.” Sinclair rubbed his eyes. “About as probable as Earth being survivable this whole time while we lived up here in a tin can?”

“The exact cause of the death wave is irrelevant,” said Kane pragmatically. “The fact remains that Earth is  _ not  _ survivable. And neither is the Ark.”

They looked at him in silent panic, paralyzed by the weight of his words.

“No. There has to be something we can do.” Abby shook her head, refusing to believe that they were out of options. “We can put people into induced comas, to reduce their oxygen consumption, or -“

“Abby, stop,” Kane began, but Jaha interrupted him. 

“Those are temporary measures. They solve nothing in the long term.”

The silence that descended was suffocating. Abby felt the room closing in on her, as if she was looking into the future through an ever-shrinking tunnel. Just when she thought she was going to black out her attention was caught by scrabbling noises coming from the corner of the room. Frowning, she made her way to one of the storage lockers that lined the wall and whipped it open. A body fell out on top of her, knocking her to the floor. 

“What the - ?” she gasped from underneath the body, which was clearly female. 

Kane was there in a flash, dragging the girl to her feet unceremoniously while Callie rushed to help Abby.

“Raven!” Abby recognised the girl, she’d been for a medical recently. She was a brilliant mechanic, one of the best zero-G mechanics the Ark had ever known. 

“You’re under arrest,” said Kane, and Abby closed her eyes in disbelief. The human race was on the brink of extinction and the man was still arresting people. 

“Kane, let’s hear her out. She must have a good reason for hiding in a storage locker.”

“She was eavesdropping.”

“Of course she was,” she retorted scathingly. “Everybody wants to know what’s going on. Did you see what just happened down on Mecha station?”

“You think we should go public?” he said quietly, gesturing towards the corridor. “It’s already chaos out there. People are panicking. You want to add to that?”

She couldn’t believe he was still insisting on keeping people in the dark after what had just happened to her on Mecha Station. She glared at him, and his mouth tightened into a thin line of disapproval, until Jaha intervened, taking control of the situation. “Let the girl explain herself,” he said authoritatively. “Then we’ll decide her fate.”

All eyes turned to Raven, who was clearly feigning a confidence she didn’t feel. Her eyes were flitting nervously from one person to another, but her chin was defiant. They waited for her to speak. 

“I know life support on the Ark is failing,” she said at last. “And I have a solution.”

  
  



	7. Chapter 7

The weeks stretch into months, and the months become a year. He hasn’t gone crazy, or maybe he has and he’s just too crazy to know it. He doesn’t have anyone to compare his behaviour too, and at this point normality is just a distant memory. He knows he talks to himself, but that’s probably to be expected. Sometimes he talks to the people in cryo but it’s not like there’s even much to say. He likes to spend time in the cryosuite anyway, he feels less alone there, and he has more chance of intervening should a cryopod malfunction.

He checks the cryopods constantly for signs of malfunctioning, but he suspects it’s a case of a watched pot that never boils. As long as he’s watching them, nothing goes wrong, so he spends as much time there as possible, running routine maintenance checks, alarm simulations, even keeping the cryopods dust free by wiping the glass and controls down with a cloth every couple of days. It seems like a respectful thing to do; there are real live people inside and he never wants to forget that, because the moment he does, he becomes the last human in the universe. The people inside are the people who made up his world; friends, colleagues, acquaintances. Enemies. He’s sure there are plenty of people in cryo who hate him, but he tends to them all equally, without distinction or preference. 

As he dusts the control panel of John Murphy’s cryopod, his mind wanders to the boy’s father, who had been floated for stealing medicine to save his son. He was on the council that sentenced Alex Murphy, not directly responsible but definitely instrumental. He feels the weight of every person floated, every life taken in the name of saving the human race. He’s not proud of the things he did, of the person he had to become, but feeling ashamed achieves nothing, so he takes responsibility for his part and he accepts that there will always be people who will hate him. He doesn’t need to be liked, anyway. Other people’s approval changes nothing.

Next to Murphy lies Clarke Griffin. Unlike most of the teens who were in the skybox, he’s known Clarke since she was a baby, has watched her grow from an angelic blonde child into a creative, charismatic teenager. With her father’s brilliance and her mother’s passion and tenacity, there’s no doubt in his mind she would have been one of the leaders of the hundred had they been sent to the ground. Will be one of the leaders, he corrects himself. They  _ will  _ get to the ground one day. They have to, or all of this will have been for nothing. 

Abby is next to Clarke, and he gives her cryopod a quick dust, although for some reason it’s the cleanest of them all. He can still see the ugly wound on her neck which hadn’t had time to heal before they’d gone into cryo. He feels the usual stab of regret that she’d been the one to suffer at the hands of Cuyler Ridley. He doesn’t think too much about this, or about the unfamiliar rush of protectiveness he’d felt when he’d seen her in Ridley’s arms, the steel blade glinting at her neck. He’s never going to see her again anyway, so there’s no need to unpack this tangled mess of feelings. No need to justify the pit of fear that had opened in his stomach when he’d seen her collapse in Mecha station, and which had prompted him to focus only on getting her to medical while the world was burning. He tells himself he’d have done the same for anyone, and he ignores the nagging voice in his head that reminds him that there were plenty of strong, hefty men present at the scene, and any one of them would have been capable of carrying Abby to medical. 

He mulls on this as he lies in bed at night, staring at the grey ceiling, waiting for sleep to take him. He’d always respected her, as a doctor and a member of the council, but he’d also always found her infuriatingly headstrong and argumentative, to the point of exasperation. He replays their last interactions over and over in his mind as sleep eludes him yet again, remembering how tiny she’d felt in his arms as he’d carried her through the Ark after the altercation on Mecha Station. How she’d fought against him, not wanting to be carried, stubborn as ever even with blood pouring from her neck. 

He tosses and turns in his bunk, preparing himself for yet another sleepless night. It’s become an increasingly common occurrence over the last few months, the lack of physical stimulation and human interaction leaving him in a state of restless exhaustion, never fully awake, but never asleep either. He goes to bed anyway, because he realises the importance of maintaining a routine, but after staring at the ceiling for six hours he’s driven to tears of frustration. He craves sleep, and his dreamlike interactions with the people in his memories which make him feel -  _ human  _ again.

Why had he and Abby always clashed so much? Thinking back, there was no one else she argued with like she did with him. As a doctor she was wonderfully sweet and patient, as a mother and wife she was loving and loyal, and as a member of the council she was professional, fair and diligent, but whenever she looked at  _ him  _ something seem to ignite inside her, and she was like a ticking bomb, just waiting to explode over the tiniest thing.

On this particular night sleep is as elusive as ever, and he does what he was hoping he’d never have to do, and turns to moonshine to knock himself out. He doesn’t want to drink, that’s not the kind of person he is, and he doesn’t want to blur the fragile confines of his sanity with alcohol. But needs must as the devil does, and he’s going to go insane anyway if he doesn’t sleep sooner or later, so he heads off to the mess in search of moonshine.

All he needs is a glass, and he passes out for ten hours straight, he’s so sleep deprived. He wakes up with a heavy head and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, wondering if he drank a whole bottle instead of just a glass, but relieved that he’s finally slept.

For the next few days he manages to sleep a little every night; he’s broken the cycle of insomnia and his body gives in when he’s tired and lets him rest. It doesn’t take long though until sleep evades him again and he’s back to square one; too overwrought to sleep but too exhausted to function properly. He doesn’t want to give in to the moonshine again but the temptation is too strong and he figures a glass can’t hurt if it brings him the release of sleep.

Speaking of release, he thinks some energetic sex would probably do the job just as well as moonshine, but of course there isn’t a chance in hell of that.

This time it takes two glasses before he passes out, and he sleeps for eighteen hours. When he wakes up he’s groggy and confused and his head is pounding from dehydration, but he’ll willingly trade that for the insomnia.

And so the cycle continues. He gradually sleeps less and less until he’s back to his zombie state and, craving oblivion, he gives in to the moonshine. Eventually he gets to the point that he needs a whole bottle of moonshine to fall asleep, which puts him in such a stupor that he’d probably sleep through a nuclear apocalypse.

And of course, it’s exactly on one of these nights that Abby Griffin’s cryopod malfunctions. 

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

Cryosleep. 

No one had ever even considered this solution. The Ark had a cryosuite but the technology had been incomplete at the time of the apocalypse and the Ark had had insufficient resources to complete it. Over the years people had tinkered and experimented but nobody had ever managed to make the cryosuite operational and it had fallen into disuse. Abby was willing to bet very few people even knew of its existence at the present time.

“Raven, the technology isn’t operational,” Sinclair pointed out. “If our ancestors here on the Ark haven’t managed it in ninety-seven years, I fail to see what we can do with only months or even weeks at our disposal.”

“The facility  _ is  _ operational,” Raven said with a smug smile. “I found a dissertation someone had done for their engineering studies. They’d come much closer than they thought to understanding how it works, and included several theories that I would never have considered myself. I’ve been working on it in my free time and I’ve figured out the missing piece of the puzzle.”

They looked at each other in stunned silence. Abby was the first to speak. “Raven, whose dissertation was it?”

Raven met her gaze, and her eyes held an unexpected sadness. “It was your husband’s, Abby.”

...............

Abby couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her mind was still reeling after the shock of the aggression on mecha station and the second apocalypse on earth, and it was all a bit too much to take in. Why had they never considered the cryosuite before?

“I found his dissertation after he was floated,” Raven went on. The words still made Abby flinch. “I really wish I’d had the opportunity to talk to him about it.” The implication hung heavy in the air. Floating Jake Griffin had been a huge mistake.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Jaha asked. “The survival of the human race could depend on that work.”

“I didn’t say anything, because I knew I was our best chance at getting it completed.” Sinclair huffed a laugh at her arrogance, but Raven turned an accusatory gaze on him. “You know I’m right, Sinclair.”

Abby was impressed with this girl. She’d met her a few times, mainly for medicals to clear her for work, and she knew she was the youngest zero-g mechanic in over fifty years. She was obviously extremely clever, but Abby had no idea she was this brilliant. 

“Very well Miss Reyes, you will turn your work over to the head of engineering and assist him in getting the cryosuite operational as quickly as possible.” Jaha looked around at them all. “At this point, it’s our only hope.” They all nodded in agreement and made to move. They didn’t have time to waste. 

“Wait a minute. Not so fast,” said Raven, stopping everyone in their tracks.

“What is it now, Raven?” Abby asked in concern.

“I have a condition.” She looked around them, her gaze strong and unflinching. “The kids in the skybox, the guinea pigs you were going to send to the ground? They get places in cryo. Every one of them.”

Jaha narrowed his eyes. “How do you know about that? It’s classified information.”

Raven looked uncomfortable, and Abby immediately understood that today wasn’t the first time that Raven had hidden in a storage closet. The girl was sneaky, and they were just lucky that whatever information she had gleaned while eavesdropping she had kept to herself. 

“I don’t think that’s of primary importance right now, Thelonious,” she intervened, shooting Raven a knowing look. “Clearly whatever Miss Reyes has learned she has used only with the best of intentions.” She touched the dressing on her neck, subconsciously reminding everyone that she had just been attacked because people were tired of being kept in the dark.

“Be that as it may,” drawled Jaha. “Tell me why should we save criminals, when they would be floated on their eighteenth birthdays anyway?”

“Even when we come out of cryo, you’ll still need your guinea pigs, to see if Earth is survivable. And it also makes sense to save the younger generation, people who can reproduce and help repopulate the earth.”

Kane had also been watching Raven shrewdly, and at this point he stepped forward. “Your boyfriend is in the skybox, isn’t that correct Miss Reyes? Finn Collins. That‘s the real reason you want to save them.”

If Raven was taken aback, she didn’t show it. “Yes, he is. But these are my terms. You can take it or leave it.”

Jaha shook his head. “You are not in a position to dictate terms, Miss Reyes. I can simply have you arrested and confiscate your work.”

Raven’s eyes glinted dangerously. “With all due respect, Chancellor Jaha, there’s nothing to confiscate. It’s all in my head. You’re going to need my cooperation.”

Abby looked at Kane, and their eyes met in mutual admiration for this feisty girl. She held her breath, waiting for him to speak. He turned to Jaha. “Sir, she has a point. We  _ are  _ going to need the hundred once we come out of cryo.” He glanced back at Abby. “And it’s only fair that these kids get a chance at survival, given the risk they were going to take to save us all.”

Abby exhaled slowly, scarcely able to believe her ears. He was advocating for the hundred? She sent him a silent  _ thank you  _ with her eyes, and he nodded imperceptibly. “And we are going to need people of reproductive age,” she added. “Raven is right.”

Jaha nodded. “Very well. We’ll hold a council meeting and vote on it. In the meantime, Sinclair please get to work with Miss Reyes on the cryosuite. We have no time to lose.”

...............

Sinclair and his team worked day and night, and five days later they did their first tests on volunteers. The pods froze and stayed frozen for first twenty-four, then forty-eight hours. Abby and Jackson did thorough check-ups on the volunteers before and after cryosleep and their findings were encouraging; cryosleep appeared to have no detrimental effects on the human body. 

“Of course, there’s a big difference between forty-eight hours and fifty years,” Abby admitted when she presented the results at the next council meeting, to which Sinclair and Raven had been invited. “But that’s a chance we’re going to have to take. We don’t have the luxury of time.”

“I agree,” said Jaha. “We have to go with the data we have. But the results are optimistic. Thank you, Abby.” He turned to Sinclair. “Good work, Sinclair. Your team’s work may have saved the human race.”

Sinclair cleared his throat uncomfortably. “All credit should go to Raven,” he said. “Her work was incredible. She found errors in formulas even Jake Griffin had overlooked.”

“The credit should go to Jake Griffin,” Raven intervened with a glance at Abby. “He had completed ninety-five percent of the work. He just hadn’t got the pressurisation formulas right. You see, cryosleep takes place once the pod freezes the body to hibernation temperatures, and the pressure on the inside of the pod at that point is inversely proportional to the temperature difference between the –“

“Raven, I think you lost us all at ‘hibernation temperatures,’” interrupted Kane drily.

“In layman’s terms, if the pressure isn’t right, the temperature won’t stay stable at hibernation temperature, where biological functions are suppressed to the point that aging is suspended. A rise in temperature would be fatal, as the body would go into hypothermia, where biological functions are reactivated but at a temperature incompatible with human survival. I’ve - we’ve - installed a safety mechanism to unthaw pods completely in the event that the pressure destabilises and the temperature rises.”

“And what does that mean?” asked Jaha.

“It means the person would be woken from cryo, but would survive. The alternative would mean dying in the cryopod. It would mean we could effectively be sending the whole human race to their deaths.”

They all looked at each other uncomfortably, and then the chancellor nodded. “Good work, Miss Reyes.” He looked around at the solemn faces around the council table. “Abby, continue correlating the medical data of the hundred to the wristbands. We’ve already started, so we might as well finish. We may still need them when we get out of cryo.”

She nodded. “Of course.” 

“Sinclair, when do you estimate we can start putting people into cryo?”

“If all the tests go according to plan, within a week, Sir.”

“Make it five days,” said Jaha with a smile. “Meeting dismissed.”

  
  


...............

Sinclair was as good as his word, and they were able to start putting people into cryo five days later. One by one, people hugged their husbands and wives and children, and climbed into the cryopods, their eyes wet with tears but their hearts filled with hope. Abby watched as pod after pod froze, sealing their precious passengers in an icy sleep that would last fifty years, until the earth had healed. 

The kids from the skybox were the last, and Abby hugged Clarke for an impossibly long time, although she knew realistically their chances of surviving cryo were better than her daughter’s chances of surviving on earth would have been, had the hundred been sent to the ground. That was a goodbye reserved for another day now. 

“I’ll see you in fifty years,” said Clarke, with a watery smile. 

“It’ll seem instantaneous,” Abby reminded her. “You’ll go to sleep and wake up immediately. That’s the beauty of it.”

“I know, mom.” Clarke smiled through her tears. “But that’s if everything goes according to plan.”

“It will.” The alternative didn’t bear thinking about. She helped Clarke into the pod, and kissed her forehead. “May we meet again,” she whispered as the pod closed, and she could see Clarke’s mouth repeating the phrase back to her over and over as the glass frosted over. She stayed by her daughter’s pod for a while, until she was convinced it was stable and Clarke was safe, still not fully trusting the antiquated technology with her daughter’s life. 

She dutifully went to check on the other pods in the section, assuring herself that they were safely in cryosleep, and that their vital signs were showing hibernation status and the pods were operating correctly. “That’s everyone,” she said as she approached Kane and Jaha. “It’s just the five of us left.” She followed Kane’s gaze to where Sinclair was talking to Callie, their heads bent close together. Abby wondered what this development meant for Kane, since he and Callie had had a thing for a while. He didn’t seem too bothered, judging by his expression. Abby had often wondered if he was capable of feeling love or affection, or if he’d just closed his heart to the deeper human sentiments in order to do his job, to float people for trivial crimes in the name of ensuring the survival of the human race. He glanced down at her now, and the depth of emotion in his eyes took her by surprise. 

“Clarke’s in cryo?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “I wanted to thank you,” she said. “For voting for the hundred.” She didn’t say anymore, she knew that he understood what it meant to her. 

“They were never just lab rats,” he commented softly. They stood in silence for a moment, surveying the rows of sleeping people. “Do you think we’re ever going to get to Earth, Abby? Is this going to work?”

“It will.” Unthinkingly, she gave him the same answer she’d given her daughter, minutes before.

He smiled. “You’re always the optimist.”

“I prefer the term realist with a healthy dose of hope.”

“What if it’s false hope?”

She shook her head slowly. “Hope, even false hope, is a vital part of what makes us human. Before the apocalypse, when the human race wasn’t fighting to survive, we've always hoped diseases would be cured, conflicts would be resolved, even just that loved ones would return safely every evening. Bad things are always going to happen, Kane, but we should never stop hoping that they won’t.”

He stared into the distance, down the long rows of cryopods stretching out in front of him. “Maybe you’re right.” A wry smile crossed his face. “‘I’m sure you won’t be offended, then, if I say that I hope from the bottom of my heart not to see you again for the next fifty years.”

She folded her arms with a small smirk. “No offence taken,” she said. ”The feeling’s entirely mutual.”

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

The wailing siren of the cryosuite alarm pierces his sleep, waking a part of his brain that tells him something isn’t right, in fact something is  _ very  _ wrong, but he’s unable to rouse himself from the moonshine-induced coma he’s been in for the best part of a day. His mind is like lead, and he feels like he’s swimming in glue as he struggles to heave himself out of bed and stagger along the corridor to cryo. 

The movement clears his head a little and he moves quickly to the malfunctioning pod, but dread is already settling in his stomach as he realises whose it is. 

“No, no, no,  _ no,”  _ he moans to himself. “Not her not her not her.” He presses the reset button, then presses freeze, but nothing happens, and he realises the pod is already nearly thawed and Abby is beginning to move inside.

“Fuck.” He hits the buttons in desperation, willing the pod to freeze again. Fuck fuck fuck. He doesn’t want to ruin her life, doesn’t want to rob her of her future. She deserves to go to the ground with her daughter, not spend her days alone in space with him. She’s already been through enough. 

“Goddammit!!” He’s desperate now, nothing he does makes any difference and the temperature gauge continues rising, taunting him in its relentless count towards the destruction of another person’s future. 

He lets out a desperate, strangled sob. His heart is pounding and his head is spinning, he can’t even see straight let alone think straight. This can’t be happening. 

It  _ is  _ happening, though, because there’s a click and a whoosh and the pod opens. He looks down in shock as Abby blinks up at him, eyes still blurry with sleep and cold, her fists clenching as the feeling returns to her fingers and she realises she can move. 

“Kane?”

Her voice is hoarse, barely a whisper, but it’s the first voice he’s heard in thirteen months and he wants to weep.

“Abby.” He lifts her from the cryopod and sinks to the ground with her in his arms, too shocked and befuddled to do anything except clutch her freezing, limp frame to him, his eyes filling with tears for the life he’s inadvertently condemned her to. He wraps his arms around her, but she’s barely conscious and shivers are wracking her body. The moonshine is still heavy in his head but slowly he comes to his senses. He has to get her warm or she’s going to die.

He manages to stand up and then scoops her up in his arms. Her head rolls back and her breathing is coming in shallow, raspy breaths. Her lips are blue and her skin is cold and clammy, so he hurries out of the cryosuite and towards his quarters. As he carries her down the empty corridor he’s reminded of that day, four years ago, when he’d carried her to medical after the second apocalypse, and his heart breaks at the thought that today her world is ending all over again. 

Once in his quarters he wraps her in all the blankets he has but she’s still shivering and blue. He debates putting her under the shower, but there are two downsides to that idea. The first is that her hair would get wet, and she has so much of it that it would make it more difficult to warm her up afterwards. The second is that he would have to see her naked, because he’d have to get the wet clothes off her, and he can’t bring himself to do that, not when she’s so vulnerable. He wracks his brains, and a second option comes to him. Body heat. He needs to warm her with his own body heat.

It’s something he never imagined he would have to do, but he has no choice, so he strips down to his boxers, apologising to her mentally and thanking the stars he’d showered the day before. He lies down next to her on the bed, pulling her into his arms and covering them both with the blankets. She’s icy cold but she senses where the warmth is and she wraps her arms around him and clings to him. He rubs her back and arms, trying to stimulate the blood flow and willing the shivers to stop.

They don’t. With a sinking heart, he realises he’s going to have to undress her too. Skin-on-skin is the best way, but she’ll hate him forever for it. She’s going to hate him anyway though, he figures, when she finds out she’s going to spend the rest of her life alone with him, so it isn’t going to make a lot of difference. At least she’ll be alive. 

“Abby, I’m going to undress you,” he says, and he feels her nodding against him. He rolls her off him onto her back and slips her T-shirt over her head. She’s wearing a tank top underneath, but no bra, so he decides to leave that for now. Averting his eyes to protect her dignity, he slides the soft sweatpants she wore for cryo over her hips and down her legs which seem impossibly long for such a short person. 

When they are as naked as they can decently be he pulls her on top of him again and wraps the blankets around them both. The warmer  _ he  _ is, the more heat he can transmit to her. He holds her for hours, buried beneath the pile of rough grey Ark-issue blankets, and little by little her breathing calms and her skin begins to feel less frigid against his. The shaking lessens, her muscles relaxing with the warmth she’s extracting from his body until she’s soft and pliable in his arms. Finally, her breathing evens to the healthy rhythm of sleep. 

Once the initial panic is over, he’s overcome with a sudden, unexpected wave of emotion. He’s had no human contact for thirteen months, and the feel of Abby’s body pressed against his, rising and falling as she breathes, her heart beating slightly out of sync with his own, is overwhelming. Her soft hair tickles his chest, and her skin has a salty-sweet scent which is so incredibly, irrefutably  _ human.  _ His throat tightens and tears slide from the corners of his eyes towards his hair. He wraps his arms even more tightly around her and tries to ignore the gnawing guilt that accompanies the undeniable, all-consuming relief that he’s no longer alone. 

He finally drifts into a deep sleep, the first in months that isn’t moonshine-induced, and when he awakes they are tangled and sticky. At first he thinks she has a fever, but her forehead is cool. It’s just that their combined body heat under the blankets has made them sweat copiously. She’s still sleeping, her cheek pressed against his chest, and he’s mortified to realise that he's woken up slightly hard. He’s not turned on, he’s not  _ horny _ , nothing could be further from his mind at this moment, but the bliss of a good night’s sleep and the pure comfort of another presence has left him with an overall sense of well-being which has chosen to manifest itself in this way, right against her hip. He shifts awkwardly, trying to move his traitorous member away from her, but she stirs and moans softly and clings to him more tightly.

“Jake,” she murmurs, running her fingers over his chest, and he closes his eyes in disbelief. She thinks he’s her dead husband. He has to get out of here, before she wakes up and realises she’s in bed semi-naked with  _ him,  _ Marcus Kane, the man who infuriates her beyond belief and whose face she would sooner slap than caress. Gently, he eases himself from under her, and although she gives a small moan of protest he’s able to extract himself from her embrace. He covers her with the blankets again, smiling to himself as she burrows down to sleep, and he pulls his clothes on and retires to the living area to wait for her to wake up. 

She sleeps for another couple of hours, and he’s beginning to grow impatient. He wants to get the difficult part of explaining their situation over and done with, but he also just can’t wait to talk to her, to have a real conversation, after a year of talking to himself. He checks on her a couple of times, just to make sure she’s okay, but she’s sleeping soundly, her long lashes sweeping her cheeks and her face more peaceful than he’s ever seen her. He feels sick to the stomach that as soon as she wakes up that peacefulness will be wiped from her features forever. 

He’s going over oxygen statistics on his data pad when she finally appears in the doorway, her hair uncharacteristically messy and her eyes blinking at him in bewilderment. He’s glad to see she’s had the foresight to pull on her sweatpants although she’s still clad only in her tank top. 

“Kane.” Her voice is rough with sleep. “What are you doing here?”

He jumps up. “How are you feeling?”

“Thirsty.” She licks her lips, which are dry and cracked, and he goes to the bathroom to bring her a glass of water. She sits in the chair opposite him to drink it, staring at him with those huge dark eyes of hers. When she’s finished she puts the glass on the table. 

“Where’s Clarke? I want to see her.”

He takes a deep breath. “Clarke’s still in cryo, Abby. Everyone’s still in cryo.”

The words take a moment to register. “What?”

“Everyone’s still in cryo,” he repeats, reluctant to elaborate. 

“Oh.” She ruminates on this information. “Well, let’s wake them up then.”

“Abby.” He hesitates. “It’s not time yet. The plan was to stay in cryo for fifty years.”

“Right. And how long has it been?”

“Four years.” He braces himself for her anger but it doesn’t come. Instead she stares at the floor for an impossibly long time, and when she raises her eyes to his face they are full of questions. 

“So why are we awake? We should go back into cryo.”

“We can’t. Our cryopods malfunctioned. I woke up first, and then you woke up yesterday. I can’t get them to freeze again.”

A myriad of emotions cross her face as she processes this, her expression finally settling into one of abject horror as she understands the bleakness of their situation. “You mean, I’m stuck here with  _ you?  _ For the rest of my life?”

The words cut like a knife, even though he’d known they were coming. “Unless we can fix the cryopods then yes. And for the record, I’m not exactly ecstatic about it either.”

“You have to be kidding me.” She stands up and walks away from him, needing to put distance between them, but her legs are still shaky so she comes to sit back down again. “Tell me this isn’t happening.” Her hands are shaking as she fiddles with her fingers. He doesn’t say anything, and she goes on. “You and me? Alone together? How is this going to work, Kane? We can barely even look at each other.”

There’s nothing spiteful in her words, just a mere statement of facts, but the thought crosses his mind that  _ looking  _ at her is the least arduous part of the situation. “I know.”

Her lips quiver and her eyes fill with tears. “I’m never going to see Clarke again?”

“I’m doing everything I can,” he says. “I’m studying engineering, I’m trying to understand what went wrong. I’ll fix it,” he finishes, the desperate promise tumbling from his lips. 

The tears fall anyway, and he doesn’t know what to say, how to tell her that he understands her anger and hopelessness all too well. He’s lived with it himself for the last thirteen months. 

“I’m never going to Earth,” she says, her voice hoarse with disbelief. “Never going to see my daughter again.” She sinks her face into her hands. “What did I do to deserve this?” 

He doesn’t know how to answer that. If there’s one thing he’s really sure of, it’s that unlike him, she’s done nothing to deserve it. They might not have always seen eye to eye, but he’s always believed that she was one of the few truly good people on the Ark. Maybe the only person who would always put everyone else before herself, every time. And besides, she’s a doctor. Their people  _ need  _ her. Her waking up is a tragedy for everyone. He reaches to take her hand. “I’m so sorry, Abby.”

His apology is of little comfort to her, and she pulls her hand away. “How long have you been awake?”

“Thirteen months.”

“You’ve been trying to fix your cryopod for  _ thirteen months?” _

He feels a flash of irritation. ”I’m not an engineer, or even a mechanic. I told you I’m studying everything I can. Even Raven and Sinclair failed to understand why the pods could suddenly malfunction.” He leaves it hanging in the air that Jake hadn’t foreseen it either, but she reads between the lines and narrows her eyes at him. 

“Don’t even think about blaming –”

“I’m not.” 

“My husband’s work saved us  _ all.  _ If it weren’t for him, we’d  _ all  _ be dead now.” 

He rubs his hand over his eyes. “I know that, Abby.” She doesn’t see how irrational she’s being, expecting him to have fixed in thirteen months what her husband, the head of engineering with twenty years experience behind him, hadn’t been able to fix. He sighs. He doesn’t want to fight with her now, she’s too fragile emotionally and it’s not going to end well. They can talk about this another time. 

She clearly has the same thought, because she stands up, still a little shakily, and he looks up at her. “Where are you going?”

“Back to bed.” 

“Abby –“

“Kane. Just – leave me alone, okay? I don’t even want to see you at the moment. Please, just go.”

“These are my quarters, though.” He knows he needs to give her her space, and he guesses correctly that she doesn’t want to spend the rest of the day in  _ his  _ bed.

She looks around, taking in her surroundings. “Okay, fine. Then I’ll go.” She heads towards the door, but stops and turns back to look at him with eyes full of pain. “You know, when we saw the earth burning, I thought we’d seen the inferno. But  _ this,”  _ her voice is pure acid, and he flinches. “This is a whole new kind of hell.” 

  
  
  
  
  



	10. Chapter 10

She stays in bed for two days.

She’s vaguely aware of Kane coming in and leaving food and water, but he doesn’t speak to her apart from to announce his presence in her quarters, and she has no desire to engage in conversation with him. She doesn’t eat the food he leaves but she drinks the water, because cryosleep has left her with a dehydration headache she can’t seem to shift. She knows she should eat too, but she has no appetite and the thought of food makes her nauseous. _Later,_ she thinks each time she sees the protein biscuits on the tray next to the bed. 

She cries sometimes, hard into her pillow until she’s exhausted and falls into a restless sleep. When she wakes up, and she remembers where she is and that this is where she’s going to be for the rest of her life, the despair sets in again and she shuts down, staring blankly at the wall for what must be hours at a time. She doesn’t count, though. It’s not important. Time has no meaning anymore.

When she’s not feeling sorry for herself, she’s angry, and she doesn’t know what’s worse. Her anger has nowhere to go, and it eats her up inside. It’s not a hot rage but an icy, seething anger that sits in her bones like the cold of cryosleep. She’s angry at Kane, for being the only other person awake, despite a tiny voice of reason at the back of her mind reminding her that he’s as much a victim as she is. She’s angry at her cryopod, which is ridiculous, she knows. And she’s angry at fate, which saw to it that she and _Marcus Kane_ are going to spend the rest of their lives together. _Anyone_ would have been better than Marcus Kane, she thinks. Hell, being alone would be better than being with Marcus Kane. She thinks back to the evening of the council meeting, just a few days ago for her because the four years in cryo don’t register as time passed, when she’d sworn to move as far away from him as possible once they got to Earth. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the irony. 

On the evening of the second day, he brings her some soup and places it on the shelf next to the bed. She ignores him, but when she doesn’t hear the door to her room closing behind him, she turns over to see what he’s doing. 

“What?” she asks flatly, and he sits awkwardly on the bed next to her. She doesn’t move, she doesn’t want him to think she’s accommodating him.

“Abby. Please talk to me. I understand how you’re feeling,” he says, but she just stares at him in stony silence. “I felt the same when I woke up.”

She shakes her head and looks away, focusing on the ceiling behind him. 

“You know… we were going to send the kids to the ground, without even knowing if it was survivable.” He rests his elbows on his knees, and she can’t help noticing that he’s unshaven. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen him unshaven. He seems a little softer, more vulnerable. She waits for him to speak, wondering where he’s going with this.

“They’d all have died in the death wave, and we on the Ark would have run out of oxygen. As it is, our people are safe, there’s enough oxygen for you and I, and we have the gift of time. Time to fix the cryopods–“

“Maybe we should wake up Sinclair and Raven,” she says suddenly, but he shakes his head. 

“I’ve thought about it. It’s an option, but I thought I’d see what I could do first. The more people who are awake, the less oxygen there is, and we don’t know how many more cryopods are going to malfunction like ours did.”

She nods reluctantly. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”

“Will you eat this soup?”

She makes a face. “I’m not hungry.”

He tries again. “Will you get up?”

“What for?”

He says nothing, because there’s nothing to say. There _is_ no reason to get up. She shakes her head and turns her back on him again. 

“Maybe tomorrow.”

...............

  
  


She doesn’t get up the next day either, though, just lies there staring at the ceiling again. He wonders if she’s thinking of happier times, or if her mind is as empty as her life is. She needs something to do, he thinks. A reason to get up. He ponders for a while and decides that an inventory in medical is the best option. It’s her domain, where she’s always worked and feels comfortable, and she’s likely to take more interest in that than tinkering with broken cryopods. 

More than anything, he realises, what she needs is normality. And normality isn’t him sitting on the bed trying to gently coax her to eat some soup, or to get up. Their _normal_ isn’t kind words and understanding and compassion. 

Normality is them arguing, and glaring at each other over the council table. Normality is her wanting to rip his head off. And if that’s what she needs, he can give it to her. 

The following morning he strides down the corridor with fresh determination and lets himself into her quarters after knocking and calling her name. He marches into the bedroom where she is still lying on the bed wrapped in a blanket and goes straight into the bathroom. He turns on the shower, checking that the water is warm and there’s soap and a towel.

She hasn’t stirred, so he approaches the bed, and leans over her. “Abby, please get up and have a shower. I need your help this morning.”

“No.” 

“I’m not going away. If you don’t get up on your own, I’ll get you up myself.” 

She turns to look at him then, her eyes still dull and unseeing. He never thought he’d miss seeing her eyes flashing in anger but he thinks now that anything is better than this emptiness. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me.”

She wraps the blanket more tightly round her in blatant refusal. “Go away.”

“I’ll count to three. One.” She doesn’t move, so he takes a deep breath. “Two.” She still doesn’t move, just stares at him defiantly, so he gently pulls the blanket off her. “Three.” With that he scoops her up into his arms, and heads towards the bathroom.

“Kane, don’t even think about it,” she warns, but he ignores her. In the bathroom he deposits her directly under the shower, and she gasps as the water runs down her face. 

“You - you -“ she splutters, but words fail her. 

“I know. Now please have a shower, and get dressed. I’ll wait outside for you.”

He exits the bathroom, closing the door behind him to give her her privacy, and busies himself in the bedroom, tidying the bed and folding blankets. He finds her some clean clothes and puts them on the bed and then retires to the living area to wait for her. 

She emerges one hour later, her hair still wet and twisted up on top of her head. She’s wearing soft sweatpants and a t-shirt, and he’s amused to note that they’re _not_ the clothes he laid out for her. He didn’t expect them to be, and he appreciates the point she’s making. She looks smaller and more vulnerable than he’s used to seeing her. Her strength of character and the respect she commands usually make her seem larger than life, a force to be reckoned with. Now she just seems deflated and empty, although the icy glare she gives him when she sees him could freeze the fires of hell.

“Don’t you _ever,”_ she pauses for effect, “do that again.”

“Okay,” he says agreeably.

She scowls, clearly not placated by his amenability. “Why are you still here?”

“Because I want to talk to you. Can you sit down a moment?” She rolls her eyes and perches on the edge of the table, folding her arms expectantly, and it’s not exactly what he intended but he’ll take it. “We’ve got work to do. This morning we need to do an inventory of medical.”

She blinks at him in disbelief. “What?”

“An inventory. You know, where you count things and record the numbers on your data pad.”

“I know what an inventory is. I just don’t understand why I have to do one when there are no other people awake on the Ark.”

“Because it’s long overdue,” he says. “The last one was overlooked –“ 

“Yes, because I was too busy treating people for the effects of oxygen deprivation,” she interrupts him indignantly.

“I know that,” he says softly. “I know how hard that period was for you.” He’s referring to Jake’s death too, but he can't tell if she’s understood that or not. Her expression remains impassive. “But now we have time, we can do it.”

She looks at him in surprise. “We? I can manage an inventory by myself, Kane. I’ve done it a dozen times. I don’t need you to babysit me.”

She’s so incredibly stubborn it defies belief. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he says, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “There isn’t a lot for a guard to do on a space station with no people. So, I’ll help you.”

“Very well,” she mutters in resignation, then adds, “That’ll be fun.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s fun or not,” he retorts, trying not to lose his temper. He takes a deep breath. “Have you had breakfast?” She shakes her head. “You should eat something. I’ll see you in medical in half an hour. Okay?”

She stares at him for a moment, and he wonders if she’s going to tell him to go to hell, but then she gives him a very slight nod, and he leaves her quarters feeling vaguely triumphant. 

  
  


...............

  
  


He sits in medical waiting for her for another hour. He’s about to give up, thinking his plan hasn’t worked and she’s just gone back to bed again, when the door opens and she enters. She’s dried her hair and tied it back in a ponytail and her eyes are looking a little brighter. He doesn’t say anything about the time he’s been waiting; it’s not important and anyway, it’s not as if time is scarce. 

“Thank you for coming,” he says with a small smile. “Shall we start with the store cupboard? There are boxes everywhere.”

“Okay. You take the top shelves and I’ll start from the bottom.”

They work in silence for what must be an hour and he’s pleased to see she is engrossed in her work, muttering under her breath as she counts and stacks boxes of pills. At a certain point she bangs her head and cusses as she reaches to the back of the shelf.

“Abby, surely it would be better if you put the pills on a higher shelf? How can you reach them down there?”

She looks at him, and he holds his breath, waiting for her to disagree. Medical is her domain, and the old Abby would never have accepted him coming in and criticising her way of doing things. He sees the flash of irritation cross her eyes, but it disappears as fast as it came, and she nods. “Okay. If you say so.”

She passes him the boxes and he stacks them on his shelf, and his heart sinks even though she’s doing what he wants, because this isn't what he wanted at all. 

  
  


...............

  
  


Time passes quickly, and before she knows it they’ve been working for a couple of hours. She finds comfort in the familiar surroundings of medical, and the process of tidying and counting calms her mind but keeps her occupied. When she’s finished the cupboard she’s organising she stands up and stretches her back, stiff from crouching on the floor. Kane is finishing the store cupboard, and she frowns at the neatly stacked boxes of pills. “You put them in order of _size?_ ” 

“Yes. I thought it would be easier to find what you need. Bigger boxes at the back, smaller ones at the front. Is that okay?” 

It’s not okay, it’s a dumb system for organising medicines, and she should absolutely chew him out for wasting all afternoon on a completely useless task, but she hasn’t got the energy, so she just shrugs instead.

“I guess. I usually group them in alphabetical order according to the drug type, but I guess that’s fine.” She rubs her forehead tiredly. “Now, I’m going for a rest.” 

He looks up at her from where he’s kneeling on the floor. “Already?”

“Yes. we have plenty of time to do this, Kane.” She really doesn’t understand what the rush is. She turns towards the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Wait a moment.” He picks up the datapad and frowns at it, and she stops, wondering what gem of completely pointless information he’s found.

“What now?” 

“There are three boxes of antibiotics unaccounted for.”

“Do you _really_ expect me to care about that?”

“It’s important.”

She wants to laugh. “It might be important should we ever need thirty boxes of antibiotics between us and find we only have twenty-seven. I don’t know how we’ll manage.”

He tuts, tapping his stylus against the datapad. “That’s not the point, and you know it. I’m afraid a report is going to have to be submitted.”

She stares at him like he’s grown another head. “A _report?”_

“Of course. It’s standard procedure.” 

“Standard procedure when there were a couple of thousand people living on the Ark, Kane.” She can’t believe he’s _still_ harping on about reports. She wonders how many he’s written since he’s been awake. One glance at his face tells her he’s deadly serious, though. 

“Technically there still are, Abby. They’re just in cryosleep.”

“And therefore will not be needing antibiotics any time soon.”

He shakes his head in frustration. “Rules are rules, and a report is needed whenever supplies are unaccounted for.”

They glare at each other for a moment in a silent battle of wills, his lawful righteousness against her down-to-earth logic. 

“And may I ask who is going to _read_ this report?” Her tone couldn’t be any more scathing. 

“Well, as Acting Chancellor, I will.”

“Acting Chancellor? Are you _kidding_ me?” Her patience is running out fast, and she looks around the room, searching for inspiration not to strangle him. “Look Kane, you want to read the damn report, you write it.” She turns to leave but stops when he speaks again.

“It will need your signature, though, as head of medical.” 

“Fine. You write it, and I’ll sign it.” She opens the door and heads out into the corridor. 

“I’ll bring it to your quarters later,” he calls after her, but she just waves a dismissive hand over her shoulder. 

Goddamnit, she thinks as she storms down the corridor. The man is _impossible._

  
  


...............

  
  


He gives her her space during the afternoon while he writes the report and then spends some time going over Jake Griffin’s work again. He can’t deny he’s half hoping she will appear, looking for something to do or even just to yell at him again, but when she doesn’t he decides to take the report to her to sign. He knows it’s just a pretext, because she could sign it the next morning, but he wants to check that she’s okay before he goes to bed. He makes his way to her quarters and knocks on her door, figuring if she doesn’t answer it probably means she’s gone back to bed and he’ll leave her be for today.

She does open it, a scornful look on her face, and he notes that her hair is still in a tidy ponytail, so it doesn’t look like she’s been in bed. There’s a faint pinkness to her cheeks and he thinks she might have been working out, following one of the exercise videos the people of the Ark used to use to get their daily exercise. She doesn’t invite him in, just holds out her hand for the data pad. He hands it over with a smirk and she glares at him again before her eyes drop to the data pad and the report he’s written. 

She stares at it for a few seconds and then shakes her head slowly in a classic gesture of disbelief. “There are three boxes of antibiotics missing,” she reads. “Signed, Dr Abigail Griffin. That’s it? That’s the report?”

“It’s concise and to the point,” he says defensively, and she shakes her head again but the corners of her mouth turn up ever so slightly.

“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” She signs it with the stylus pen he passes her and hands it back to him. 

“Yeah, well, I decided it wasn’t really necessary,” he admits. “Here, I brought you some protein bars. You should eat something.”

He holds out the tin and she takes it with a small smile. “Thank you."

“You’re welcome.”

She looks at him for a moment, her expression unfathomable. “You know,” she begins cautiously. “I know exactly what you were trying to do today.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says blankly. 

She shakes her head, as if dismissing the idea from her mind. “Goodnight, Kane.”

“Goodnight, Abby.” He’s barely said her name when she shuts the door, and he finds himself staring at the cold grey metal and realizing that he’s been rumbled. He smiles to himself at her astuteness. 

He’d have to get up very early in the morning to catch Abby Griffin out. 

  
  



	11. Chapter 11

When he knocks on her door to get her up the next morning, she groans and pulls the blanket over her head. He’s insistent as ever though and there’s no way she’s letting him drag her out of bed again so she heads to the bathroom, ignoring the satisfied smirk on his face as she slams the door behind her. Inside she strips off and washes quickly, muttering to herself. She can’t believe his gall, although maybe she can; he’s always been the one person who wasn’t afraid to do what needed to be done, no matter how unpopular it made him. She feels a begrudging admiration for him for that.

He’s waiting for her in the living area again, and there’s no trace of smugness in the warm smile he gives her. “Morning. Did you sleep well?”

She contemplates him thoughtfully, her doctor’s eyes noting the puffiness under his eyes and the washed-out look of his skin. “Fine, thank you. Better than you, by the looks of it.”

“Probably. I don’t sleep much anymore.”

“Maybe tonight I can give you something to help you sleep,” she says without thinking. 

His eyes snap to hers in surprise. 

“Pills,” she says at once, her cheeks reddening. “I meant pills. Not –” she stops, flummoxed, not knowing how to go on without putting into words what he’s thinking. 

He relaxes, visibly relieved. “Oh. Okay. Yeah, that would be great. Thanks.”

They look at each other awkwardly for a moment, and then he stands, letting out a huff of air. “Shall we go?”

They work in medical all morning again, and even though they get quite a lot done, she still can’t really see the point when nobody is going to use any of this stuff for another forty-six years. She dutifully sorts and stacks and tidies, ticking boxes and making lists, but everything feels like such an effort, such a waste of time. They don’t speak; she has nothing to say to him and he seems to sense she wants to be left alone, which means she can lose herself in her thoughts, and the time passes much more quickly.

After three hours she’s had enough though. She enters the last numbers on her data pad and sits back against the cupboard door, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. When she stops her vision is all blurry and she blinks to focus. “I’ve had enough for today. We can carry on tomorrow.” She pulls herself to her feet and, placing the data pad on the table, heads towards the door without even waiting for his answer.

“Abby.” He scrambles to his feet. “Where are you going?”

“Well I thought I’d go for a nice walk on the beach,” she begins. “And then I thought I’d go shopping, maybe take in a movie.” She rolls her eyes. “Where do you think I’m going?”

He blinks at her, clearly annoyed by her sarcasm. “You can’t spend all day in bed.”

“Why not?”

“Because –“ he stops. “Because it’s not healthy.”

“Kane, nothing about this is healthy. I just want to pretend it isn’t happening.” 

He kicks the cupboard door shut gently, the action one of mild frustration rather than anger. “Look, we need to try to find a way to not lose hope here. What happened to “Hope is a vital part of what makes us human?” 

Anger flares in her at his words. “You don’t get to throw that back at me,” she says quietly. 

He lowers his eyes at her glare. “I’m not throwing anything back at you. I’m just trying to remind you who you are. I know it’s hard -“

“No, you don’t. You don’t have a daughter who you’re never going to see again, who is going to wake up in forty-six years to find her mom is long dead.”

He stares at her, his expression conflicted, but then his shoulders sag in defeat. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re going through.” He turns back to the data pad on the table, and she can see that her words have wounded him. She’s reminded him that he has no one who will miss him when the others come out of cryo. Not even Callie, she thinks, remembering the tender looks that had passed between her friend and Jacapo Sinclair. She hasn’t got the energy to deal with his feelings too, though, so she opens the door and turns to leave. 

“You know, I spent thirteen months alone,” he says, stopping her in her tracks. He’s silent for a moment, and she wonders if he’s going to continue. “Thirteen months thinking I was never going to see another living person again. That I was going to die alone in space. Knowing that when people wake up they will just be glad that it was only my cryopod that malfunctioned, and not somebody dear to them.”

It’s the first time she’s ever heard him talk like this, and she turns to look at him, guilt pooling in her stomach. She’s been so wrapped up in her own grief she hasn’t considered his plight. He doesn’t let her speak though. 

“There were times I thought I was going crazy. When you’re just alone, day after day, you lose track of what’s real and what’s not. Your dreams can become more vivid than your reality. The conversations in your head more real than the silence around you.” He swallows, and his eyes are heavy with anguish. “You start losing your humanity. I nearly did something unspeakable. Unforgivable.” His voice nearly breaks, so she doesn’t press him to elaborate. “Your words really helped me to have hope. To feel human. So please.” His face is pained. “I need you to keep believing them too.”

She nods, too overcome to speak, and his face relaxes slightly into a resigned smile. 

“Get some rest,” he says, turning back to the datapad. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She stares at him for a long moment, but he’s clearly done with their conversation, so she opens the door and leaves.

...............

She spends the rest of the afternoon in bed, sleeping a little, crying a lot, but often just staring at the grey ceiling, lost in memories of happier times. She misses Jake, but there’s nothing new there; she’d missed him before they went into cryo, his death still a huge aching wound on her soul. She misses Clarke, and her heart hurts that Clarke will wake up to find she’s lost her mom without even knowing it, but Clarke’s strong, and Abby takes consolation in the thought that her daughter will get to earth. She misses Callie, her best friend, who she’s never gone a day without speaking to since they first met at the kindergarten on Alpha station at five years old. She misses Jackson, her trusted friend and colleague, and she realises with a start that she misses her patients, or rather, she misses being a doctor, and having people to care for. 

The thought reminds her that she’d promised Kane some pills to help him sleep, and her heart lifts a little at the chance to be a doctor, and to make a difference to someone’s life, even if it just means Kane not showing up tomorrow morning with bags the size of airlocks under his eyes. She should go to medical, she thinks, and get him the pills, and take them to him. She still feels a lingering unease over their conversation earlier. She’s always considered her compassion and empathy to be her greatest strengths, and a fundamental part of what drove her to become a doctor. She’s aware that they’ve been severely lacking in her behaviour towards Kane, so she decides to take him the pills and try to make amends before bed. 

Back in medical she rifles through the pills on the shelves, her task made more difficult by the fact that he’d ordered the pills in size order and not according to drug type. She shakes her head in disbelief; now that she knows that he did it on purpose to make her yell at him, she can’t help smiling a little. Tomorrow she’ll do it her way. She can’t find any sleeping pills but there are some decongestants that have a drowsy effect and she also finds some dried herbs that can be used to make a tea that will help him to relax. She makes up the tea and takes it to his quarters together with the pills. 

She knocks at the door but there’s no answer, so she pushes it gently and it opens; there’s no need to lock it with only the two of them on the Ark. His quarters are in darkness so she switches on the light and sits in the chair she’d sat in on the first morning to wait for him.

...............

Marcus finishes his fifth set of one hundred push ups and decides to call it a night. He’s already done more than he should; his usual fifteen minute workout has become twenty-two minutes tonight, but living with Abby Griffin means that it takes five hundred push ups instead of three hundred to work the tension from his muscles. He picks up the rough grey towel and dries his hair and face, and muses on his situation. 

He has to admit, from an entirely selfish point of view, it’s an improvement. Having someone to talk to, someone else to think about other than himself has given him a purpose. His strategy to get her out of bed has worked and she’s up and firing on at least three if not all four cylinders, but he hadn’t counted on how exhausting the tension would be on less than a couple of hours’ sleep a night. He can’t blame her for directing her anger at him, though, when it’s what he wanted, and anyway, the anger is easier to deal with than the silent despair that engulfed her when she first woke up. Anger implies an emotional energy which can be harnessed, channelled into something productive. Despair, on the other hand, is destructive. Empty, hollow, sucking in everything around it like a black hole. He’s been fighting the gravitational pull of his own black hole for months, and he has no intention of being sucked into hers, or of letting her disappear into the abyss either. That’s not how Abby Griffin’s story is going to end, not on his watch, anyway. 

He’s craving sleep at this point, and as he’s making his way back to his quarters he wonders idly if she’s going to remember the sleeping pills she’d promised him that morning. He doesn’t really want to go and ask her for them. She made it perfectly clear she’d had enough of his company for one day. Oh well, he thinks. What’s one more night without sleep. 

...............

She’s beginning to wonder if she should just leave the pills and go when the door opens and he comes in, already pulling his t-shirt over his head in preparation for a shower. He stops, clearly surprised to see her there, then quickly pulls his T-shirt back on again. 

“Abby.” He blinks at her wearily. “What are you doing here?”

“I brought you the pills,” she says, and his eyes drop to the box and cup of brown liquid on the table. “And some tea. It’s nearly cold, but it should help.”

“Oh! Thanks. That’s really nice of you. I was kind of hoping you’d remember, to be honest.” 

“They’re not sleeping pills, just decongestants but they should knock you out. It’s not really healthy to use them as sleeping pills, but –”

“Nothing about this situation is healthy, right?” For the second time that day he repeats her own words back at her, but this time she just nods. He looks at her expectantly. “Was there anything else?”

She bristles slightly, but puts his shortness down to exhaustion. His face is lined with fatigue, the shadows under his eyes almost purple.

“I also wanted to apologise -“ she begins, but he stops her with a shake of his head.

“It’s not necessary, really.”

“Okay. But I just want you to know, you can talk to me. You’re not alone anymore, and even though I’m not the best company in the world, I can listen. And maybe, between us, we can make this awful situation a bit more bearable.”

His expression lifts a little. “Thank you. That means a lot to me. And you too, if you ever need to talk. I know I’m not very good at these things, but I’ll do my best...”

He looks so self-conscious, but at the same time so sincere, that she feels a rush of compassion for him. She’s not sure what comes over her next, but she crosses the room and wraps her arms around him in an awkward hug. He tenses at first, but then he puts his arms around her and hugs her back, and in that hug she can feel all the loneliness and despair of the past thirteen months ebb from his body. He holds her so tightly she can hardly breathe, but she doesn’t resist, just moves her hands further up his back to hold him more closely. His muscles relax under her hands and he sinks into her, and her heart lurches when she feels his chest heave in a sob. Marcus Kane, the stoic, impassive, unfeeling head off the guard and councilor, is crying in her arms, and she’s unable to stop her own silent tears from falling too.

They stand there for a long time, clinging to each other, united in their grief for everything they’d hoped for and which is now just out of reach, snatched away from them by faulty technology that no one is to blame for. When he finally regains control of himself he releases her and moves away, and she can see he’s mortified at his breakdown, although it must be a small consolation that her cheeks are wet with tears too. There’s a wet mark on his T-shirt where her face was pressed against him. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, rubbing his face with his hands. “I’m just exhausted. I should sleep.”

She nods, wiping her own tears away and switching back to doctor mode as a defense mechanism for both of them. “The pills will help. You can take two, and drink the tea too.”

“Thanks. For everything.” He picks up the pills and downs them with a mouthful of tea, grimacing at its bitter taste. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Sleep well, Marcus.” She exits his quarters, noting with surprise how easily his first name rolls off her tongue. 

  
  



	12. Chapter 12

He doesn’t come to get her out of bed the next morning, and she takes advantage to have an extra half hour under the covers. She’s sleeping surprisingly well for her, but she suspects it’s just the effects of cryo combined with the fact that her body is shutting down as an escape mechanism. She has no doubt that she’ll soon start having the same difficulty sleeping that he has. 

She’s actually a little hungry so she eats a protein bar for breakfast. When he still doesn’t show up she decides to head to medical, figuring she might as well carry on with the inventory. It keeps her occupied, and she has to find something to fill her days. She’s halfway there when her doctor’s instinct kicks in and she changes direction and goes towards his room. He’s probably just getting some much needed sleep at last but she’d prefer to check he’s okay. 

She knocks on the door, and when he doesn’t answer she pushes it gently open and goes inside. The living area is empty, the cup which she’d brought the tea in still on the table. She tiptoes over to the bedroom and peeks in the door. Her eyes take a second to adjust to the darkened room and then she makes out his sleeping form, one arm flung above his head while the other is stretched out across the bed, the blankets tangled around his bare legs. He’s sleeping like a baby, and she marvels at how even the most haughty man can take on an angelic appearance when he’s asleep. She’s glad for him. He’ll feel better for it, and maybe he’ll be a little less snappy with her. 

Smiling to herself, she closes the door and leaves, and she can’t help but feel a rush of satisfaction that her pills worked. It's good to feel useful. 

...............

Marcus sleeps until nearly lunchtime, and he’s horrified when he wakes up, but he feels more rested than he has in thirteen months. Unlike the moonshine, the pills haven’t left him feeling like he’s been hit by a drop ship. He heads to medical, feeling a little sheepish, and is pleased to find she’s there already, perched on the table with the datapad in her hand. This means she got up alone, and he’s proud of her.

“Morning,” he says.

“Afternoon,” she says without looking up. “You slept, I see.”

“Yeah.” He looks at his watch. “Fifteen hours.”

“Wow! That’s great. Do you feel better?” She raises her head, and she seems genuinely pleased for him, but she’s a doctor, of course she is.

“Much better. Everything seems easier when you’ve slept.”

They look at each other uneasily, and he can see she’s remembering his breakdown last night. He wonders if she’s feeling as awkward as he is about it. He’s gone from wanting to give her a bit of normality, by yelling at her about reports, to crying in her arms in thirty-six hours and it’s unsettling for both of them, an unravelling of twenty years of status quo. The boundaries of their relationship have crumbled overnight and now they need to establish new ones. 

“Um, about last night…” he begins, but she interrupts him.

“Marcus, it’s okay. We’re only human, you know.” 

He appreciates her use of the first person plural. “Yeah.”

She looks back at the datapad, indicating that there’s no more to be said on the subject. For now. “I’ve finished the inventory. Everything’s in order except for six packets of bandages. Do you want me to write a report?” Her tone is vaguely sarcastic, but it brings them back into familiar territory.

He strokes his chin. “I can probably just add it to the other one.”

“Sounds like a plan. Right, we just need to clean up a bit.” She jumps down off the table and rolls up her sleeves.

“Okay. Tell me what you want me to do.”

…………...

They clean medical from top to bottom until it’s shining and gleaming. When they finish there’s colour in her cheeks and her eyes are a little brighter, and for the first time he lets himself believe she’s going to be okay. 

“We did a good job here, huh?” she says, looking around with a satisfied air. They are sitting on the floor, leaning against the cupboards, sorting through the last box of odds and ends; rolls of bandages, half-used bottles of pills, thermometers and other miscellaneous objects they’d gathered from the various corners of medical.

“We did.” He winds up another bandage and places it tidily in the box marked “Bandages”. They work in a silence which isn’t awkward but isn’t quite companionable, until she clears her throat and speaks. 

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” He frowns, wondering what’s coming.

“Why was I in your bed when I woke up the other morning?”

He’s been wondering if she was going to ask about that. “Well, you were hypothermic when your pod opened. I had to get your body temperature up, so –” he stops, suddenly feeling shy, and she’s a doctor, she can work it out.

“You warmed me up with your body heat?”

“Yes.”

“So you were in the bed with me?”

“For a while, yes.” He narrows his eyes. “Is that okay?”

She gives a little humourless chuckle. “I guess. I mean it’s a little weird, isn’t it? It’s you, and me. And we were naked in bed together.”

“Not naked,” he says firmly. “We had our underwear on. Nothing inappropriate happened, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He’s half joking but when she doesn’t answer his heart plummets. “ _ Abby! _ Is that what you think?”

She chews her lip, as if contemplating her answer, and he drops the bandages he’s winding up into the box in disgust.

“I know you don’t have a very high opinion of me, but I didn’t think it was  _ that  _ low. For the record, I prefer a woman to be conscious and consenting, okay? I would never –”

There’s horror written all over her face when she raises her eyes to his. “No! Of course that’s not what I think!” She reaches for his arm. “I’m sorry, I never meant to imply…”

He’s slightly placated by her apology. “So what  _ did _ you mean?” 

”Well, this is embarrassing, but… I had a dream about Jake. A very vivid dream. And when I realised I was naked in your bed –”

“Not naked,” he reiterates.

“I was worried  _ I’d  _ done something inappropriate.”

“Oh!” He smiles. “Well, you did rub my chest a bit.”

“Oh no!” She cringes visibly and he chuckles. 

“That’s when I realised it was probably time for me to get up.”

“That’s it? That’s all I did?”

He decides she doesn’t need to know he’d heard her murmuring Jake’s name in her sleep. ”You hummed a little, like you were happy.”

He immediately regrets what he’s said, because her face crumples. “I was,” she whispers, as a tear slides down her cheek. He’s kicking himself, the last thing he wanted to do was make her sad, and he’s unsure how to comfort her. She puts her face in her hands, the tears coming in full force. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, but she just cries harder, and he pats her leg awkwardly. He wonders if he should hug her like she’d hugged him but he doesn't know if that’s something she wants to make a habit of. He doesn’t have a lot of experience with people crying. People generally didn’t cry around him, probably because they thought they wouldn’t get much sympathy, but clearly something has changed after last night, and apparently crying is something they do now. “Dreams can seem devastatingly real,” he says. “And when you wake up and reality kicks in, it’s heartbreaking. I know.”

She looks at him curiously through her tears.

“I used to see you in my dreams. All of you. I dreamed about the Ark, before the oxygen crisis, or that we had solved the problem of the CO 2  scrubbers. At first it was soul destroying when I woke up. Reality hits even harder.”

She nods despondently. 

“But then I began to take comfort in them. I dreamed whole conversations with people. I was living, working. Functioning. I began to look forward to them. They tethered me, kept me in touch with who I was.” He pauses. “And then I stopped sleeping, and the dreams stopped.”  


When she looks up at him her eyes are red-ringed and full of sadness. “Did you ever wish it had been someone else’s cryopod that had malfunctioned?”

“Of course I did. Every single day.”

“I feel so guilty,” she whispers. “I keep wishing it had happened to somebody else. That somebody else’s life had been ruined. And I feel - bitter, that there are people who still have a chance of seeing Earth.”

“Oh, Abby. You don’t have to feel guilty. I think it’s only human.” He wonders if he’ll ever have the courage to tell her about The Idea, how close he had been to waking up another person and leaving them to die so that he could go back into cryo. He’s sure she would never even contemplate such a thing, as much as she might  _ wish  _ it had happened to someone else.

She hugs her knees, lost in thought for a moment, and when she speaks again it’s like she‘s read his mind. “I don’t really have a low opinion of you, you know. Why do you think that?”

He shrugs. “You always seem like you want to rip my head off and spit down my neck.”

“Well, I do most of the time,” she says flatly. “I don’t always agree with your way of doing things, but I don’t think you’re a bad person.” 

“Oh.” That surprises him, and he’s at a loss for words. 

“And you know, I’d rather be here with someone like you, who I can speak my mind with. And who speaks their mind with me. Tiptoeing around each other all day would be tiring.”

“I’d say you and I have never had any problem speaking our minds,” he says, and her smile widens, and then her face crumples again and she puts her head in her hands, but he can see it’s just because her barriers are down now.

“Ugh! Why did this have to happen to us?” 

He doesn’t have an answer to that, so they sit in silence for a moment. She’s staring into the distance, and there’s sorrow in her eyes but her jaw is set.

“How did you cope? When you first woke up? I mean on a practical level. There was nobody to drag you out of bed every morning.”

“You know, I think what got me through it was the hope that I could fix my cryopod and go back into cryo. I started studying the engineering texts, trying to get at least a basic knowledge so that I could understand Jake and Raven’s work and try to figure out what went wrong.” He hesitates. “Maybe you could help me. You have a much more scientific mind than me. We could work on it together.”

She smiles. “There’s a big difference between medicine and engineering.”

“It's just machines instead of people.”

“Remind me not to pour engine oil onto your joints when you’re old and arthritic then,” she says drily. “But sure, I’ll give it a shot. We can also work on the oxygen problem. Have you tried running simulations?” There’s a glimmer of enthusiasm in her eyes now and he’s glad. If she sinks back into depression he might very well follow her and they could both find themselves drunk and on the wrong side of an airlock.

“I have, but we can keep trying. We could start tomorrow,” he suggests. 

“Why wait till tomorrow? We can start today.” She places the bandages she’s rolled up into the box. “Come on. We have work to do.”

She gets to her feet, and he smiles to himself. This is more like the Abby Griffin he knows. 

...............

They work all afternoon in Earth monitoring. She’s tireless, driven by an almost maniacal energy, and he’s frankly shocked by how sharp her mind is, how quickly she understands concepts he hasn’t even begun to get his head around yet. When she suggests going over everything a second time, just to make sure he hasn’t missed anything, he rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and shakes his head. 

“I think that’s enough for today,” he says. “I’m starving, and I think my brain is going into meltdown.”

She looks up at him from the data pad. “Okay. I’m going to carry on for a while longer though.”

“You aren’t hungry?” She’s still not eating much, and it’s worrying him, and he doesn’t want her enthusiasm to burn itself out. She needs to pace herself. 

“I’ll get something later. I’m just going to go over this section again.”

“Abby.” He puts his hand on hers, stopping her in her obsessive scrolling, and waits for her to look at him. “Please come and have dinner with me. I’m so tired of eating on my own.”

Something in his voice makes her eyes soften, the obsessive spark giving way to something that almost resembles the tenderness he saw when she hugged him yesterday, and she nods. “Okay.” She switches off the data pad and hands it to him, and together they make their way out of earth monitoring and towards the mess. 

...............

Once in the mess he pulls out a chair for her in a mock gallant gesture and she rolls her eyes as she sits down. 

“Stay here,” he says. “I’ll get us something. Would you like rehydrated vegetable soup, or rehydrated vegetable soup?” The choice isn’t exactly appealing but it’s better than the dry biscuits she eats in her quarters. 

“Rehydrated vegetable soup will be fine,” she says. “Is there carrot and potato? If not whatever there is.”

He disappears into the kitchen and she sits and stares around the empty room. The mess was always such a lively place, thronging with people, the sound of cutlery clattering on plates drowned out only by the incessant chatter and laughter. She’d eaten here with Jake, until he’d been floated, and then with Callie. She feels a pang of longing for her friend, her nostalgia almost palpable. 

“You’ll get used to it,” he says, reading her mind when he comes back with the bowls of soup. “The silence, I mean.”

“Yeah. I guess.” She’s pleased to see he brought her the soup she asked for, and for the first time she feels an inkling of an appetite. She tastes the soup and it’s good. There’s something about hot food that really seems to replenish not only the body but the soul. They eat in silence for a few minutes, and then he speaks again. 

“And I mean, look on the bright side. At least we don’t have to watch Big Phil spraying his food everywhere. That’s a small mercy, right?” 

She screws her nose up in distaste. “Ugh. Yes. Or listen to Martha licking her fingers. That used to drive me mad.”

He laughs. “Do you remember the time her husband yelled at her about it?”

“No?”

He grimaces. “He told her that the noise she made licking her fingers sounded like the Ark was being attacked by a giant squid.”

She smirks in amusement. “I can imagine she wasn’t impressed with that!”

“Nope. She confiscated his desert every day for a week.” 

“That’s pretty funny.”

“Yeah. He got no desert and she still carried on licking her fingers. Poor guy .”  They chuckle together reminiscently, and then he pauses awkwardly. “Hey, um, I was wondering. Do you know how to play chess?”

She looks at him in surprise. “Not really. Jake and Clarke used to play a lot, but I never really had time.”

“Oh, okay. It doesn’t matter.” 

His disappointed face tugs at her heart strings. “Teach me,” she says. “I have time now.”

His face lights up. “Are you sure? I’ve been playing on my own, but it’s not much fun. I keep losing to myself.”

She rolls her eyes at his dumb joke. “Now, you mean?”

“If you like. It helps me to sleep.”

She considers his offer. It’s not like she’s particularly anxious to be alone again. It would be nice to have something to think about. And besides, if it will help him to sleep… she’s a doctor, she should do whatever she can to help his insomnia. Within limits, of course. “Okay,” she shrugs. Why not? 

Back in his quarters, he sets up the chess board on the table between them. The pieces are mismatched: they are roughly divided into black and white but they are all from different chess sets and it’s not easy to understand which piece is which. One of Abby’s pawns is bigger than her king, which is confusing, and he has two pawns which are just pieces of twisted iron. 

He explains the rules patiently, showing her the moves each piece can make, and then they begin to play. It’s more fun than she’d imagined, although she quickly loses a few pieces and realises that he’s good. “It looks like playing on your own was good practice,” she says in admiration when he takes her fourth pawn. “How did that work, anyway? Did you get up and change seats to play the other move?”

He laughs. “No, I just sat to the side, and tried to play each move as if I hadn’t played the previous one. It was actually useful for trying out strategies.”

“You have strategies?” she asks as he moves in with his bishop to take her rook. “Oh, yeah. You have strategies.” She studies the board intently for a minute, then moves her king to take his knight in return.

“Kings don’t move like that, Abby,” he reminds her gently, and she tuts to herself. 

“Right. I’m thinking of poker.” She replaces his knight and then moves her queen instead. “Queens move like this, though, right? Check.”

He glances down, realising that he’s left his king unprotected and it’s now in check with her queen. “Sneaky,” he says, before swooping in with his rook to take her queen. 

“Damn,” she mutters. “I didn’t see that.”

They play two games, and of course he wins them both, and then he suggests that maybe it’s bedtime, but she can see he’s just anxious not to keep her there longer than she wants. She’s actually enjoying herself though, and is in no rush to go back to her lonely quarters with her memories and thoughts. 

“Let’s play best of three,” she suggests, and he laughs. 

“That doesn’t make sense. I’ve already won two, so I’ve already won the best of three.”

“You know what I mean. Let’s play one more. I want to beat you.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I never had you down as a bad loser,” he says. 

“You really don’t know me, do you?”

His eyes are smiling as they meet hers. “I guess I don’t.”

They play another game, and she battles till the end, finally capturing him in check mate when she has only three pieces left compared to his seven. 

“Well played,” he says, holding out his hand, and she shakes it triumphantly, although she has half a suspicion he went a little easy on her. She doesn’t mind, though; it’s touching that he wanted her to win, and she admires his skill at the game and how easily he could have wiped the floor with her if he’d wanted to. 

If there’s one thing she can never say no to, it’s a challenge. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	13. Chapter 13

A couple of nights later she has a nightmare. She dreams that they send the kids to the ground, all one hundred of them, including her daughter. The council is optimistic at first but then radio contact is lost, the comms knocked out by a storm during landing, and only the wristbands give any clue as to the kids’ well-being. The screens in Earth monitoring show the vital signs of each and every teenager on the ground, and the council can only watch in horror as the kids perish one by one, their screen going dark as the wristbands cease to transmit. Finally only one screen is left; her daughter’s. Clarke is alone on earth, her vital signs going haywire as she fights for survival. In the statistics on the screen Abby can read the pain that Clarke is in, the hunger, the dehydration, the fear and desperation, and there in the middle of Earth monitoring she breaks down, tears flowing down her cheeks as she begs the universe to end her daughter’s suffering and release her to death. 

She wakes up shaking, her heart racing and her cheeks wet with real tears. In the bathroom she splashes water on her face but her hands won’t stop shaking. “It’s just a dream,” she repeats to herself. “It's just a dream. Clarke’s okay. She’s in cryo. She’s okay.”

The words start to sink in and her racing heart slows as she takes in the reality of the situation. Clarke  _ is  _ okay, for now. Marcus is right, she thinks. If Clarke had gone to the ground, the situation would have been even more tragic: Her daughter would have died horribly in the death wave. 

She feels a surge of hope, followed by a feeling of peace. They still have a chance. They can work on the oxygen problem, they can work on the cryo pods. There  _ are  _ possibilities, and even though Marcus Kane is  _ not  _ the man she would have chosen to be alone on the Ark with, she knows he will do everything he can to take care of the people in cryo. She just has to hope they can agree on the way to do it, she thinks. Now  _ that  _ could be false hope. 

She goes back to bed and tries to sleep, but her mind is too active and she tosses and turns for half an hour. In the end she gets up and goes to the cryosuite. She finds Clarke’s pod and peers inside, and the peaceful expression on her daughter’s beautiful face brings joy to her heart. She’d hardly seen Clarke even before they went into cryo, because she’d been in isolation in the skybox after Jake had been floated. At least now Abby can see her whenever she wants. Another small mercy she has to be thankful for. 

There’s a data pad by the control console so she picks it up and plonks herself down next to Clarke’s pod and pulls up the engineering text she’s been studying. She’s soon engrossed, the combination of her daughter’s proximity and Jake's work giving her a sense of familiarity and serenity. 

She’s read a couple of chapters when she’s startled by a movement at the entrance to the cryosuite, and she raises her head to see Marcus standing there, a sleepy, confused look on his face. He scans the rows of cryopods and then his eyes meet hers, and she lifts a hand in a small salute. 

“You’re up early,” he says with a frown. “Are you okay?”

“I had a nightmare and couldn’t sleep, so I came here. I don’t feel quite so alone here, you know?” He nods in understanding, his face serious. She can’t help noticing that his hair is sticking up comically at the back. “Did you sleep?”’

“Yes. The pills are really helping.” He runs his hand through his hair, making it stick up even more. “And my nose is clear, which is an added bonus.” 

“I’m glad.” She can’t help her mouth widening into a smile, and his eyes crease in confusion.

“What’s funny?”

“Your hair. I’ve never seen it like that. It’s all sticking up.”

“Oh.” He smooths it down with his hand, which has no effect whatsoever. “Is that better?” 

“No, but it’s fine. Everybody here is unconscious, they won’t notice Councillor Kane now walks around with an extreme case of bed hair.”

He grins but she’s amused to notice his cheeks turning a little pink. This seems to be happening a lot recently, and it’s a completely new feeling for her, being able to tease him, but it seems to be their new dynamic, here where there isn’t much to argue about; a way of channeling their rivalry into something a little softer, something more akin to friendship. 

“I don’t usually –“

She rolls her eyes. “I know. I’m kidding.”

He shakes his head, obviously deciding to humour her, then sits down next to her on the floor, leaning against Clarke’s cryopod. “So what was the nightmare about?” 

“I dreamed we sent the kids to the ground, and they all died slow and terrible deaths.” She can’t even put into words her devastation over Clarke’s death. 

“Ugh. I’m sorry. That’s horrific. But–“

“I know. Not unrealistic.”

He nods. “It’s what would have happened.”

“Yeah. And it made me realise, this isn’t so bad. When I first woke up, I thought this was the worst thing ever–“

“ _ A whole new kind of hell, _ were your exact words.”

She grimaces. “I know. But it’s not so bad. At least our people are safe for now, and we have time to find a solution. I’m sorry I was so awful to you.”

“I’m sorry for dumping you under the shower.” 

“Apology accepted, but you should know I  _ will  _ get my revenge for that.” She smirks and he grins back at her, and it strikes her how much more handsome he is when he smiles. The way his eyes crease and twinkle is charming and for a fleeting moment she can see what Callie used to see in him. She vows to herself to make him smile as much as she can, because it’s hard not to smile back at someone who is smiling at you, and they both need to keep their spirits up. 

“So,” she says. “What’s the plan for today?”

“I don't know. We could go over the section on the formulas again.”

She purses her lips. Frankly she’s sick of formulas. “You’ve been going over that for the past fourteen months. Why don’t we just open up my cryopod and see if it malfunctioned for the same reason as yours?” 

“But I don’t know why my cryopod malfunctioned,” he says, confused.

“Well, all the more reason to open them up and have a look.”

He tuts. “Do you just open up your patients to see what’s wrong with them?”

“I do when they’re dead,” she retorts. “You’re the one who said engineering is just medicine with machines instead of people.”

He looks stumped at that, and tries a different tactic. “Wouldn’t it be better to understand what the possible causes could be, before we start dismantling things?”

She’s silent, not convinced, and he throws her an exasperated glance. “Fine. We’ll open them up and have a look, but we’re not dismantling anything. Okay?” He takes a screwdriver out of his pocket and begins to open a panel on the side of Abby’s cryopod, which is next to Clarke’s. He removes the panel and together they peer into the ten inch wide hole in the side of the cryopod. There are some gauges, and a circuit board, and hundreds of wires, and she actually has no idea how they are supposed to know if everything is as it should be or not.

They spend the morning fiddling around inside the cryopods. He opens the panel on the side of his, and they go back and forth between the two. They work in a comfortable silence, and she appreciates not having to fill the space between them with meaningless discourse. They’re both aware, she realises, of the need to get along as well as they can, and to not irritate each other unnecessarily, and neither is bothered by the moments of silence between them. They have many days ahead of them to fill with words.

She’s poking around inside her cryopod with a screwdriver, trying to match the wires to the wires in Raven’s diagrams, when she notices a smaller circuit board to the left. This one is darker in colour, blackened as if it had been burnt. She lifts her head to call him excitedly. 

“Marcus! Come and see this. There’s a burnt out circuit board. How did that happen?”

He’s behind her in a flash, peering over her shoulder. “I can’t see anything.”

“Have you got a flashlight?” 

He pulls a penlight out of his jacket and shines it inside. “Show me.”

She points with her finger, moving some wires out of the way so he can see more clearly. 

“Abby, be careful,” he warns. “There’s live –“

She doesn’t hear the rest of his sentence, because a shearing pain shoots up her arm and an invisible force throws her backwards against him. She’s vaguely aware of her body hitting his and his arms closing around her before everything goes black. 

……………..

When she regains consciousness she’s being carried down a corridor, and she’s hit by an absurd sense of déjà vu. It’s the same corridor leading to medical he’d carried her down after the episode in Mecha Station, only this time there are no people swarming past in panic, no cries of hysteria, just a cold grey silence, and the sound of his footsteps echoing on the metal floor. 

This time, of course, she’s not surprised that it’s him carrying her but the sense of indignity is the same, especially considering that the last time she’d been in his arms like this she’d ended up fully dressed in the shower. 

“Put me down,” she mumbles groggily. “I can walk.”

He looks down at her with a shake of his head. “You’re incredibly predictable, you know.”

“I am not! I just don’t like being carried.” Her head is spinning though and her hand is throbbing. “What happened?”

“You got an electric shock, from the cryopod.”

“Shit.” That explains her throbbing hand and racing heart. She rests her head on his shoulder and she feels his arms tighten around her. He carries her into medical and places her on the same bed as last time. 

“You need to hook me up to the heart monitor. My heart is racing because of the shock.” 

He nods and pulls the monitor towards her, and she pulls her t-shirt over her head with her good hand so that he can attach the pads to her chest. Her heart rate is a hundred and twenty; not good but it’s falling slowly. She breathes deeply and holds her breath, trying to raise her aortic pressure to slow her heartbeat. 

She raises her hand in front of her face to check the burn. The back of her hand is a livid red. “I need a non-adhesive dressing for this,” she says to him. “Can you find one?”

“Of course.” He finds one straight away, thanks to the thorough inventory they’d done, and she tries to apply it with her good hand but unfortunately that’s her left hand and she struggles and drops it. He takes the dressing from her. “Here. Let me do it.” He wraps it gently around her hand, then holds it in place with tape. “Is that okay?”

“Perfect.” The fact that the burn isn’t exposed to the air already means that it stings less. “I’ll live.” She smiles at him weakly, but his eyes are serious when they meet hers. 

“You scared me for a moment. I thought you were dead.”

“You won’t get rid of me that easily,” she says with a chuckle but he doesn’t laugh, just looks down at her bandaged hand which he’s still holding in his. 

“How do you feel?”

“Tingly. And dizzy. But that’s normal. I just need to rest a bit. You can go, I’ll be fine.”

“I’d rather stay here, and make sure you’re okay.”

“Okay.” She’s surprised but not displeased. He can keep her company.  “That better be the absolute last time you have to carry me to medical,” she jokes. “It’s getting ridiculous now. Twice is more than enough.”

“Well, if you count the time I carried you to my quarters after you woke up from cryo, it’s three times.”

She contemplates this. “I was married to Jake for twenty years and I don’t think he ever carried me anywhere.”

“Sensible guy,” he says with a smirk. “It’s an extremely risky business. I fear for my head every time.” 

She turns to look at him, incredulous. “Are you teasing me?”

He smiles. “Just giving as good as I get. But for the record, I’ve never carried a woman around either.” He lets go of her hand, placing it gently on her abdomen, and moves to the next bed, stretching out on his back with his hands behind his head. She can’t help noticing his T-shirt has ridden up and she can see the soft dark hairs on his belly. His next words surprise her. “I guess you know about Callie and Sinclair, huh?"

“Yeah. I’m happy for them.” The unspoken words hang in the air; she had never been happy for him and Callie, and he knows it. 

“You never approved of us,” he says. 

“I - it’s not that I didn’t approve, I just felt she deserved more than you were prepared to give her. I wanted to see her happy, in love. And I don’t think you loved her, did you? Be honest.”

If he’s surprised at her directness he doesn’t show it. “No, and I never pretended I did. I cared about her though. But I’m glad Sinclair can make her happy. She deserves it.”

She stares up at the ceiling, emboldened by the fact that she can’t see his face. “Have you ever been in love?”

He’s silent for a while, and she thinks maybe she’s overstepped the mark. They’ve never talked about such personal matters, but things are different now. She’s never hugged him, or cried in front of him, or laughed over a game of chess with him before cryo. 

“No,” he says at last. “I decided a long time ago that love wasn’t for me. It was just easier that way.”

“Oh.” A lump forms in her throat, and she turns her head to look at him. He’s not looking at her, but his profile is proud. She swallows. “You trying to break a girl’s heart here, Kane?”

He carries on staring at the ceiling, but raises an eyebrow in her direction. “You getting all sentimental on me, Griffin?”

She turns away, blinking hard because suddenly it’s difficult to focus, and she thinks that actually yes, she just very well might be.

  
  



	14. Chapter 14

“I was thinking,” Kane says to Abby a week or so after her electric shock. “You should teach me some first aid. I need to know what to do if something happens to you and you’re unconscious.” The electric shock incident had scared him, because he has no idea how to treat a person who is unconscious beyond putting them in the recovery position and calling a doctor. And  _ she’s  _ the doctor, which is a problem if she’s unconscious. 

They’re eating dinner in the mess, their usual simple meal of rehydrated vegetable soup with protein flakes and crackers. Mealtimes have come to be moments of quiet companionship, and he looks forward to them more than he thought he would. There’s never any pressure to talk, with her. She only speaks if she has something to say and doesn’t really suffer mindless chit chat, and he appreciates that, because trying to fill endless silences would be exhausting. 

They’ve slipped into an easy routine. They spend a couple of hours together every morning, then after lunch they have a rest separately in their quarters. Then they meet again in the afternoon for another two or three hours, and then come together again for dinner and chess or a movie before going to bed. It works, because neither of them wants to be alone, but they’re also aware of each other’s need for space. They were never close before cryo, and suddenly living in each other’s pockets would quickly become claustrophobic, a powder keg which the smallest spark could transform into an unbearable situation. 

“You’ve never done first aid?” She seems puzzled, and rightly so; first aid training used to be mandatory for just about everyone on the Ark. 

“Of course. It’s part of the guards’ training. But I meant more than the basic stuff we were taught back then.”

“Okay. I can do that.” Her eyes brighten at the prospect, and his heart lifts. The truth is, he has an ulterior motive behind his suggestion. He desperately needs her to keep her spirits up, and in order to do that she has to retain her sense of identity, but it’s hard to be a doctor when you have no patients. All her life she’s devoted herself to caring for others, it’s such an integral part of who she is that he suspects she feels like a piece of her is missing now that she has no one to care for. And she’s a wonderful doctor, brilliant and compassionate and respected by everyone, and he wants her to feel that again. 

She still has good days and bad days, just as he did when he first woke up from cryo. This morning she seemed tired, her eyes lifeless and ringed with dark circles, and it was this which pushed him to propose the first aid training. The way her eyes brighten at the idea suggests he was right in his suspicions. 

They start the next day. It’s more interesting than he thought it would be, and makes a nice change from engineering. She’s a good teacher, clear and succinct, and not without a sense of humour, although she does sometimes forget how little he knows about medicine, and how simply she needs to explain things, which can make her a little impatient. They go over the basics, which he’s already done but it’s good to revise, and a week later they’re moving on to more advanced procedures. He’s a little squeamish - there’s a good reason he went into the guard and not into medicine - but he does his best, until she proposes teaching him how to give an intramuscular injection. 

Anything involving needles leaves Marcus Kane shaking and nauseous. She knows that, she’s had the privilege of inoculating him several times and it always ends up with him flat on his back with his legs in the air to get the blood to return to his head. It’s not something he’s proud of, though, so he’s determined to overcome it. 

She takes the syringe and fills it with a small quantity of saline solution, and turns to him with that deceptively angelic smile doctors use when they are pretending they aren’t going to puncture your body with a horrifyingly long needle. “Okay,” she says sweetly. “Drop your pants.”

“What?” She can’t be serious.

“I’m going to inject your thigh, so you can see clearly how to do it.” She takes an antiseptic wipe, ready to swab the area, and looks at him expectantly. 

“Do I have to?” It’s bad enough he’s probably going to pass out. Having his pants around his knees is not going to help his dignity. 

She tilts her head on one side, studying him curiously, and he wavers beneath her gaze. “Are you shy? It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, you know.

She’s right, of course, so he unzips his pants and pushes them down, tugging his T-shirt down as low as it will go to cover his boxers in case they are more threadbare than he thought. He can see her smiling to herself.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what gives you that idea.” She flicks the syringe with her finger to bring the air bubbles to the top but the glint in her eye is unmistakable. “Okay. First you swab the area.” She rubs the wipe lightly over a small area of skin on his left thigh. “Then, hold the syringe at ninety degrees to the skin and just push it cleanly into the muscle.”

“All of it?” He’s already feeling faint at the idea of those two inches of stainless steel entering his body.

“The deeper it goes into the muscle, the better.”

“Isn’t there a danger it could puncture something important?” 

She looks at him aghast. “Just what vital organs do you think you have in your thigh?” 

He colours a little. “I don’t know. Anatomy was never my best subject. Can I squeeze your hand?”

“Of course.” She puts her hand in his, and he squeezes it while she holds the needle over his skin and then pushes it in. At least, he can feel that’s what she does judging from the pain in his leg but he doesn’t see because he has his eyes screwed tightly closed. When she’s finished and he feels the swab on his skin again he opens them and grins triumphantly. He’s survived an intramuscular injection without passing out, but he’s dismayed to see she’s looking at him with an expression more akin to exasperation than pride. 

“What?”

“You had your eyes closed. You were supposed to be watching.”

“Oh,” he says meekly.

“Let’s try again. Other thigh, and this time watch, okay?”

“Again? Won’t I overdose on that stuff?” 

This time she chuckles. “You can’t overdose on saline solution.” They repeat the procedure, and this time he watches, although it feels like the room is closing in on him, swirling and spinning around him. He focuses on her hand in his, though, she has such kind and capable doctor’s hands, and it keeps him grounded. 

She’s satisfied he’s watched it this time, but there is pain in her eyes when she looks at him. “I guess I need to show you how to treat a broken hand next,” she says, and he looks down, realising he’s still crushing her hand in his. 

“Sorry!” He loosens his grip and brings her hand to his lips, dropping a small kiss on the knuckles before he’s realised what he’s doing. She stares at him for a moment, and he wonders if he’s made a mistake, but then her face breaks into a smile. 

“Thank you. But for the record, kisses are not generally considered an acceptable form of treatment in the medical world.”

“They’re not?”

She smiles again, and brings her hand to briefly stroke his cheek, which is covered with a few days worth of soft beard again now, before turning away from him. When she turns back she has another syringe in her hand, and her eyes are alight with mischief. “Okay, your turn.” 

“Abby, no. I can’t.” 

“Of course you can. Do you want to do it to yourself? Or to me?”

“Neither.”

She decides for him. “You should do it to me,” she says. “You’ll never be able to stick it in yourself.”

“I’ll never be able to stick it in you either! What are you doing?” as she slides her pants down over her hips and sits on the bed next to him. They both have their pants around their knees now and he laughs nervously. This is ridiculous. 

“Swab, jab, swab,” she says, putting the syringe into his right hand and the wipe into his left hand. “You can do it.”

His eyes fall now to the soft smooth skin of her thighs and he feels sick. There’s no way he can stick a needle in her. She’s perfect, her skin is perfect, he can’t puncture her with this torturous instrument he has in his hand. What if it breaks inside her? What if he hurts her? 

He shakes his head. “I can’t.” 

She takes his hands in hers. “Marcus, look at me,” she says, her tone startling him into submission. His eyes meet hers, deep dark brown pools of hope, and he can see she has complete faith in him that he can do it. “One day, my life may depend on you being able to do something like this. You can do it.” 

“Okay. You’re right.” He lets out a shaky breath, and swabs a small area of skin on her left thigh. 

“Jab, Marcus,” she whispers and he does, pushing the needle firmly into her thigh. He’s amazed how smoothly it goes in, he’d expected it to meet with resistance, but it just slides down into her muscle. He moves his thumb to compress the plunger on the syringe and then pulls it steadily out, immediately covering the area with the wipe. 

“You did it!” She’s ecstatic for him, her whole face alight with pride, and he just has time to beam back at her before he keels over in a dead faint.

  
  


……………

  
  


When he comes around she sends him to rest in his quarters for the afternoon, concerned he may still be in shock after the traumatic first aid lesson. She herself spends the rest of the day in the cryosuite next to Clarke’s cryopod, the datapad in her hand, but her mind keeps wandering to the spot on the back of her hand where Marcus kissed her when he realised he’d crushed her fingers. It had been such an oddly chivalrous action, so sweet but so spontaneous, and she wonders if he realises how intimate it was. 

After a couple of hours she gives up on the engineering texts and heads off to meet him for dinner after placing a quick kiss and a whispered “love you” on Clarke’s cryopod.

He isn’t in his quarters, which surprises and vaguely irritates her; she’d specifically told him to rest up. He’s going to choose exactly now to not listen to her? No matter what differences they had on the council, he was generally good at following doctor’s orders, probably because he was loathe to waste any more resources on himself by disobeying and making his condition worse. She shakes her head and sets off for Earth monitoring, since she’d come from the cryosuite and he wasn’t there, but he’s not in Earth monitoring either, or the gym or the mess. Beginning to worry now, she pops her head into every door and finally finds him in the observation room, sitting against the wall with a bottle of moonshine in his hand.

“Hey.” She sits down next to him. “I was worried about you, I looked everywhere. You were supposed to be resting. Doctor’s orders.” Her tone is light but his eyes remain unseeing, fixed on some star millions of miles away. 

“Hey,” she repeats, shaking his arm. “Marcus. Talk to me.”

He takes a swig of moonshine. “Do you know what day it is today, Abby?”

“Um.” She thinks. Keeping track of the date was hard enough on the Ark, let alone now it’s just the two of them. “Monday the somethingth of March?”

He huffs a laugh, amused at her attempt. “It’s Tuesday April seventh.”

“Oh.” She wonders why this is important, and then she remembers. “Oh. Marcus, I’m sorry. It’s the anniversary of your mom’s death.”

He doesn’t answer immediately. “I keep thinking, now that we’re doing the first aid lessons; if only I’d known the signs of a stroke, I could have saved her life. Right? There were clear symptoms. But I didn’t know, and I just said goodnight and left her.” His voice cracks a little and she reaches for his hand. What he’s said is not wrong, but how could he have been expected to know? 

“It’s possible,” she admits. “But you can’t blame yourself. You’re not a doctor.”

He shakes his head in frustration. “I could have seen the signs. And it just might have been enough.” 

She knows what he’s thinking. Vera had suffered a stroke during the night, and Marcus had found her the next morning, already unconscious. Abby had done everything she could but Vera had never come back from the vegetative state the huge stroke had left her in. Unfortunately, Ark law didn’t allow for precious resources to be used for persons in a vegetative state, and the council voted unanimously for Vera to be floated. 

“She didn’t know anything,” she reassures him softly. “I sedated her. She went to sleep and never woke up. She knew no fear or pain.” Unlike Jake, she can’t help thinking, who had been fully awake when he was floated, as was the law for criminals.  _ Criminals.  _ The word still sticks in her throat. 

He squeezes her hand, which is still in his, and then lets go to pick up the moonshine. He takes a drink and then holds it out to her. She hesitates, and then takes it and drinks, the liquid burning and easing the ache in her throat.

“She would have loved to see Earth,” he says.

“She would have been heartbroken to see it destroyed in the deathwave though.”

“Yeah. Maybe things happen for a reason.”

“Maybe.” She’s still struggling to find a reason as to why she and Marcus Kane are going to spend the rest of their lives alone on the Ark.

They pass the moonshine back and forth, and Abby can feel the liquid coursing through her veins, warming her muscles, and making her feel lightheaded. The feeling is not unpleasant. She’s not a big drinker of moonshine so it doesn’t take much to have an effect on her.

The Earth isn’t visible from this side of the Ark at the moment, and it’s easy to imagine that it will still be lush green and blue when it eventually comes into sight. For a moment she lets herself believe that the deathwave hasn’t happened and the Ark is buzzing with people, but the illusion doesn’t last long because why would she be sitting here shoulder to shoulder with Marcus Kane, sharing a bottle of moonshine? She glances at him but he’s still lost in thought, his eyes unseeing, his mouth set, but as she watches him his eyes focus and then widen. 

“Abby,” he whispers. “Look.”

She follows his gaze to the window where the Earth is coming into view, only it’s not the plain brown barren Earth they usually see. They are on the night side of the planet, sheathed in darkness, but the surface is rippled with the beautiful coloured lights of the aurora borealis; vivid greens which swirl into turquoise, fiery reds that fade into pinks, purples and yellows that flicker and flash across the night sky. Abby has seen them before, of course, but tonight’s show beats everything she’s ever seen; they are breathtaking, and seem to last for an eternity. They watch in awed silence, and maybe it's a combination of the moonshine and the psychedelic show playing out before them, but it’s one of the most surreal experiences she’s ever had. She relaxes back, mesmerised, and for a moment nothing matters except the beauty below them and his reassuring solidity next to her, grounding her physically while her mind floats away into the sea of colours.

When it’s over, they come back to their senses, blinking in bewilderment. “Wow!” they say at the same time. Abby gives a soft chuckle. “Your mom really put on a show for us, huh?”

He gives her a half frown, half bemused smile. “You really think so?”

“I’m sure. Vera was an amazing spirit. I’m sure she would find a way.”

He sits in sceptical silence, but finally he nods. “Maybe you’re right,” he says warmly, squeezing her hand which has somehow, inexplicably, ended up in his again.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	15. Chapter 15

Something seems to change between them after they start the first aid lessons. He’s no longer the uptight councillor and head of the guard obsessed with rules and reports. He’s more relaxed, scruffier, and he smiles more. She likes his smile, it’s like a bright light in a dark room. Her favourite thing is when he says something seemingly “Kane like” and she turns to glare at him, indignant or exasperated, only to find he’s smiling at her, his eyes creased, waiting for her to rise and yell at him. She’s expecting to see his usual smug or arrogant expression and instead his amusement immediately throws her, and she feels herself dissolving into a smile despite herself. His self-awareness is unexpected and pleasantly refreshing. 

They’ve both developed an uncanny knack of reading each other’s mood. He always seems to know if today is a day that she needs to be busy, to keep her mind occupied with engineering concepts and oxygen simulations, or if she’s woken up in a melancholy mood, her mind in the happier times of the past and she just needs him to  _ be  _ there, without demands or expectations. If it’s a day for teasing or a day for letting her cry and giving her space. There are days they talk for hours over a bottle of moonshine and there are days they don’t say more than a few words to each other all day. Some days she’s fuelled by an inexhaustible optimism and it’s her turn to lift him up, to keep him afloat, and other days she gently coaxes him out of a slump with endless patience and kind words. 

The day they finish completely dismantling Marcus’s cryopod is one of these days. She’s calm and optimistic and focused, but he’s floundering a little. As they sit on their heels, surveying the parts before them, he picks up a burnt out circuit board, the same one that was burnt out in Abby’s cryopod, and lets out a long sigh.

“Without this, there’s no hope of ever getting this thing working again.” He turns it over in his hands, staring glumly at the blackened piece of plastic which has single handedly destroyed their future. Abby thinks quickly, recognising the signs of the despair that lurks just below the surface in both of them. She’s learnt that action is the way to re-centre him. If he feels there’s something he can do, no matter how little, he can keep the demons at bay. 

“Maybe there are spares down on Mecha? We could go down and check.” They are living solely on Alpha, which is more than big enough for two people, and also gives them access to both the cryosuite and the go-sci ring. 

“There’s no oxygen on Mecha, Abby. It would be a tremendous waste to oxygenate the whole station for one person. And you have to go through Factory to get there. You’d have to oxygenate them both.”

“There must be a way.” She rubs her forehead thoughtfully. “I know. What if we suit up? With O2?”

She’s pleased with her idea, but he still shakes his head. “That’s still not going to work. There are no airlocks between the stations. If we open the doors to Factory we’ll just suck all the oxygen out of Alpha.” There had been airlocks between the different stations, when they first came together a hundred years ago, but since they were no longer necessary inside the Ark they were slowly dismantled and used to replace parts of the external airlocks, leaving only airtight doors inside the Ark.

“Right. So we’ll have to go the way there  _ are _ airlocks.”

“Outside?” He looks at her doubtfully. 

“Yes. We can go across to Factory station, and from there across to Mecha.”

He’s still not convinced. “Have you ever done a spacewalk?”

“No. Have you?”

“A long time ago. It’s part of the guards’ training.”

“Do you think you could do it again?”

He shrugs. “I guess. I’d only have to get to Factory, though, because then I can open the internal doors to Mecha, since there’s no oxygen anywhere. It’s only the doors between Alpha and Factory that we can’t open.”

She nods excitedly. “Okay. This could work. We have to plan it carefully, though, and I’ll need to do a full physical on you to make sure you’re fit enough. And we’ll do some practice runs first, just simple space walks before you try reaching Factory.”

“Yes ma’am,” he grins, and she shoots him a stern look, although she’s relieved to see his spirits lifting.

“Don’t be facetious,” she rebukes him. “It’s for your own good.”

“I know that. I’m just touched you care.”

She flinches slightly at his statement and lowers her eyes, busying herself with the parts in front of her. She lines them up in straight lines, trying to bring order to the chaos, but if she’s honest with herself the chaos is inside her, not in the pieces of machinery surrounding them where they sit on the floor. 

“Of course,” she says at last. “Believe it or not, I don’t want you to accidentally float yourself. I quite like your company.”

“Oh!” he says suddenly, bringing them both back to reality. “Couldn’t we check the inventory to see if the parts are there first, before going on a mad goose chase out of an airlock?”

She nods. “In theory, yes. But do you have any idea what  _ this,”  _ she holds up the burnt out circuit board, “is actually called?”

“Good point,” he concedes. “Okay, I guess the airlock it is.” 

...............

He passes his physical with flying colours, but she knew he would. Marcus is as healthy as a man born in space could be, and he has almost none of the symptoms of oxygen deprivation that had been affecting most of the Arkers before they went into cryo. The year he spent alone with slightly more oxygen probably explains that.

“You should do it too,” he says as he pulls his T-shirt back on. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

She agrees with him, so he carries out the same examination on her, measuring her blood pressure, heart beat, and oxygen saturation levels as well as the basic sight and hearing tests. She’s proud of how much he’s learnt in the medical field, and he even manages to withdraw blood to check for glicemia and iron levels, although of course she’s there guiding him all the way.

“You’ve come a long way,” she says in admiration. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks,” he grins, and she can see he’s pleased.

...............

  
  


Two days later, Marcus is ready to try his first spacewalk. As they approach the airlock, Abby begins to feel shaky and slightly breathless, which she vaguely identifies as the first signs of anxiety. She hasn’t been near an airlock since Jake was floated, and she hadn’t foreseen the effect it was going to have on her. Studying spacewalks and airlocks in theory was not the same as standing in front of one and preparing to open it. 

If Marcus notices her discomfort he doesn’t say anything although his eyes are soft as she helps him suit up and she thinks he understands. When he’s ready he opens the door to the airlock and steps inside, and connects the oxygen feed to the valve on the front of his suit. Abby moves to the control station and begins the decompression sequence, and the act of going through the stages they’ve studied calms her brittle nerves. 

“Decom sequence complete,” she says, forcing her voice to be strong and steady. “Purging the recycle tanks.” 

He nods. “Okay. Open the refresh valves.”

She pauses, her finger poised over the switch, then takes a deep breath and flicks it upwards. There’s a whooshing and a whirring, and she watches as his feet lift off the floor as he becomes weightless in the decompressed airlock. Their eyes meet, and he gives her a slight nod, barely perceptible through the bulky spacesuit and helmet. She places her hand on the button, ready to open the external doors so that he can float out of the Ark into the blackness beyond, but when she looks back into the airlock, seeking reassurance that he’s ready, the face that looks back at her has no helmet, no spacesuit, just a threadbare sweater and sad blue eyes which are full of love and regret. She squeezes her eyes shut and breathes deeply, trying to push the image of her husband’s floating from her head, but she can’t do it, she can’t open the airlock to send Marcus out into the void of space, because what if he never comes back? 

With a sob she presses the re-pressurisation sequence, and the panic begins to ebb from her muscles as the airlock fills with oxygen and his feet touch the floor. She can see through the glass of the airlock door that he’s confused, his brow drawn and his eyes questioning. 

She opens the internal door and he steps out of the airlock and takes his helmet off. 

“Abby! What happened? What’s wrong?” 

She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I panicked.” Her eyes fill with tears which she brushes away in frustration. “I saw Jake in the airlock, waiting to be floated...”

In one stride he’s closed the space between them and taken her in his arms, and she sinks her head against his shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay. We don’t have to do this.” His voice is low and rumbles in his chest and it grounds her. He’s not Jake, and the rough fabric of the spacesuit against her cheek, as well as the oxygen feed securing him to the Ark are all the reassurance she needs that he’ll come back. They know what they’re doing. A planned spacewalk is  _ not  _ the same as floating someone.

She pushes herself away from him. “No, it’s okay. I’m sorry, it was just a moment of panic. Let’s do this.”

He brushes a strand of hair out of her face, concern lining his features. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” She reaches up and places a soft kiss on his cheek. “For luck,” she smiles before he can ask. “Put your helmet on.” 

He complies, and when it’s secure he goes back into the airlock and she initiates the depressurisation sequence, and this time when she places her hand on the button she remembers the feel of his spacesuit against her cheek and the panic doesn’t take her. With a deep breath, she pushes the button and watches through the glass as the external doors open with a grinding hiss, and Marcus floats out into the inky black of space. 

He holds onto a rung on the outside of the Ark at first, and then pushes himself away out into the void. The desert planet that is Earth seems almost close enough for him to touch, even though it’s four hundred kilometres beneath him. Abby counts under her breath and keeps her eyes on the oxygen feed which tethers him to the Ark and her to her sanity. 

He floats further away, and she watches mesmerised through the glass of the inner door. She can almost feel the sense of freedom he’s feeling. She’s never done a spacewalk, it’s never particularly appealed to her, but she knows that it can be an addictive experience for those who do them regularly. She casts her mind back to Raven Reyes. Her boyfriend Finn was in the Skybox because he’d taken an unauthorised spacewalk, and a subsequent malfunction had cost the Ark three months of oxygen. Spacewalking was like a drug to those kids, she thinks sadly.

Marcus is coming back inside, and she closes the outside door and pressurises the airlock. His feet touch the ground gracefully, like a ballerina coming out of a perfect grand jeté, and when the green light comes on she opens the inner door and he whips his helmet off, a grin the size of the go-sci ring on his face. 

“Wow!”

“How was it?” she asks, his happy expression making her smile too. 

“Abby, it’s amazing! It’s so beautiful, and peaceful. I felt like I could reach out and touch the Earth. And the Ark! It’s enormous, and silent, and somehow so  _ powerful _ , just suspended here in space...” His eyes are alight with joy, and his excitement, coupled with the relief that everything has gone well, makes her feel giddy too. ”You should try it!”

“Me?” His words bring her back to reality with a jolt. “Oh no, it’s fine, I’m just happy that you can do it, and we can get to Mecha.” It hasn’t even entered her head that she could do a spacewalk too. 

“Abby, do it! I want you to experience it too. You don’t have to go far, and you’ll always be tethered, but it’s such an incredible feeling! Nothing on the Ark can compare to it!” His enthusiasm is infectious, and she feels herself being swayed. She  _ is _ curious to know what that freedom feels like.

“Okay,” she smiles, feeling suddenly adventurous. “Okay, I’ll give it a go.” 

She suits up, although the suit is enormous on her and his eyes are twinkling as he helps her fix the straps. 

“What?” she asks suspiciously, but he just shakes his head.

“Nothing. I just – you look cute. Like a tiny fierce astronaut.”

She gapes at him in surprise. Has he just called her cute _?  _ “Thank you,” she says, faintly amused. “I think.” 

His cheeks are tinged with pink and his expression is unreadable, and she has a feeling he wants to say more, but he just turns to pick up the helmet instead. Before he places it over her head he bends to kiss her cheek, his lips warm and his stubble rough against her skin. “For luck,” he whispers and she feels herself growing warm all over. He puts the helmet on her and fastens it to the spacesuit and she’s ready to go. 

Nerves flutter in her tummy as she steps into the airlock and it takes her a moment to realise that she’s not so much scared for her own safety, but that he will be left alone if something happens to her. She wonders if he had the same thoughts as he stepped out of the airlock. 

She feels herself rising into the air as the pressure reduces and she can’t help laughing at the feeling. She’s never been weightless before. She turns slowly as the airlock opens and, with her heart in her mouth, she steps out into the void. 

The feeling is  _ amazing.  _ She floats a few feet from the Ark, and then turns to stare at it. Marcus is right, it’s incredibly powerful, but also somehow  _ wretched,  _ abandoned here by the Earth when it died. She can see across to the airlock on Factory that Marcus will have to reach to get to Mecha, and it seems so far away it makes her stomach lurch. She turns again to look at the Earth. She still hasn’t got used to not seeing the blues and greens. The land is burnt brown and the oceans dried up in the wave of fire. Where did the water go, she thinks to herself. So much water. 

Marcus’s voice comes over the intercom. “Ark Station to Dr Griffin. How are you doing?”

She chuckles inside the helmet and turns to wave to him. She wonders if he can see her smiling. “I’m fine,” she breathes. “This is incredible. It’s so, so beautiful.”

“Isn’t it?” he says softly. 

“I could stay out here forever,” she sighs happily. She hears his deep chuckle over the intercom.

“Please don’t. I quite like your company.” 

She laughs too. “Okay, I’m coming back in.” She pulls herself carefully along the oxygen feed, until she’s back in the airlock and she does her own grand jeté as the external doors close behind her. When the internal doors open she rips her helmet off and almost falls into his arms, giddy with adrenaline and relief. 

Her europhia is short lived. A wailing siren pierces the air, and Marcus’s face freezes with horror. 

“What the hell is that?” she asks, grimacing at the ear splitting noise.

“It’s the cryosuite,” he says, panic in his voice, and her stomach fills with dread. “Another cryopod is malfunctioning.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	16. Chapter 16

Marcus sprints down the corridor to the intermittent wailing of the cryosuite alarm. His heart is hammering in his chest, one thought running through his mind. He can’t fail another person, he can’t let another person wake up for no reason. He has _one job,_ he thinks to himself in frustration. _One job;_ to press reset on a cryopod when it starts malfunctioning, so that the person inside stays in cryo. So that his people can get to Earth. _One job,_ and so far he has a fifty percent success rate. 

He’s not going to let that become a thirty-three percent success rate. 

Abby is hot on his heels and he’s amazed she can keep up with him given that she’s still wearing the bulky spacesuit. One glance at her face tells him everything, though. She’s terrified it’s Clarke, and her maternal instinct is kicking in, giving her superhuman strength to try to save her daughter. He grabs her hand and pulls her along with him. 

They get to the cryosuite and he scans the rows of pods, searching for the flashing temperature gauge of the malfunctioning pod, and they both breathe more easily when they realise it’s not Clarke’s. Marcus rushes to the pod and hits the button to halt the thawing process, then presses “reset” and “activate”. He waits with bated breath until the glass starts to frost over again, and then he heaves a deep sigh of relief. He’s done it, the pod is freezing again and the person is safe. 

He rests his hands against the cryopod, struggling to get his breath back. Abby stands opposite him, red and breathless from their run. Their eyes meet in triumph; he’s ecstatic and she’s visibly relieved, but then her smile fades and her expression darkens, changing slowly to one of confusion, then to understanding, and finally to disbelief. 

He can read her mind as if it were an open book, her thoughts clearly written in the hurt in her eyes and the lines of confusion on her forehead. She’s just seen him reset a cryopod and stop it thawing, and now she’s wondering why he didn’t stop hers.

“Abby…” he begins, but she just shakes her head and backs away from him. “I know what you’re thinking. And please. Don’t.” His heart is racing and he feels sick. The way she’s looking at him makes him want to cry, and a lump forms in his throat. “I can explain.”

She shakes her head again, and squeezes her eyes closed. When she opens them again they are glistening with tears. “Please tell me,” she says, her voice cracking. “Please tell me there’s a good reason why you didn’t do that to my cryopod.” 

“I did everything I could,” he says. “When your pod malfunctioned –“

“Except reset it? Like you just did to this one? You clearly know what to do.” She wipes the tears from her cheeks. “It doesn’t seem complicated. Why didn’t you do that to mine?”

“It wasn’t that simple,” he says. “Your pod was already nearly thawed –“

“Oh, I think it’s perfectly simple,” she says slowly. “You couldn’t bear to let me go to Earth, could you? To have what you couldn’t have. If your life was ruined, mine was going to be ruined too.”

He feels a flash of anger, hardly able to believe what she’s saying. After everything they’ve been through, she can’t truly think that little of him. “You really think I’d do that?” His voice is hollow with disbelief. “I thought you said you didn’t have a low opinion of me. You can’t get much lower than that.” 

She lowers her eyes, but he can see she’s still seething with anger. “Well then, maybe you were just lonely? And wanted company?”

He scoffs at that. “Do you really think I would have chosen _you_ to wake up? The one person who used to despise me more than anyone else on the Ark? And you’re a doctor, our people need you. I can’t believe you think I would do something so - so selfish.”

She’s silent, and he takes advantage to go on, softening his tone in an attempt to make her see reason. 

“Abby, I didn’t get here quickly enough. I admit that. I’m so sorry –“ 

She doesn’t want to hear it. “And I’m so stupid. Stupid to trust you, stupid to think we could be friends.”

“No. Don’t say that. Please, listen to me. It happened at night, and I was sleeping. I didn’t hear the alarm straight away.”

“You didn’t _hear_ it?” Her eyes are wide with incredulity. “It was deafening in the airlock, which is much further away. How could you not hear it? Unless you were passed out blind drunk, it’s impossible not to hear.”

He says nothing, and she immediately understands, taking his silence as an admission of guilt. 

“You’re kidding me. You were drunk? I’m stuck here with you because you were feeling sorry for yourself and got _drunk_?” 

“No!” he says, but she holds her hands up in a gesture that she’s done listening to him, and turns to walk away. 

“I drank to sleep,” he calls after her, and he can hear the desperation in his voice. “It was the only way to get some sleep. I hadn’t slept for days, and it knocked me out so hard I didn’t hear the alarm.”

She stops, and he thinks that maybe she’s heard him. She knows he has problems sleeping, she must understand that he didn’t do it on purpose. That he would _never_ do something like that. Silently, he wills her to turn back, to talk to him, but she just shakes her head and continues out of the cryosuite, and he watches her go with a sinking heart. 

Fuck fuck fuck.

...............

Back in her quarters, Abby takes a shower to calm her raging emotions and then climbs into bed even though it’s still early and she hasn’t had dinner. She’s not hungry, though. Her insides are churning with nausea after their fight. The knowledge that he could have prevented her from waking up sits like a lead brick in her stomach. She’s angry, and she’s heartbroken because against her better judgement she’s grown fond of him, and the sense of betrayal is overwhelming. 

She tosses and turns in bed, going over the events of the evening in her mind, trying not to remember how happy she felt after the space walk. She tries to think logically. He definitely knows how to stop the cryopods from thawing, that much is clear. Which means he must have done it before, and that must have been before she woke up, because the alarm hasn’t gone off since she’s been awake. So why didn’t he stop hers? 

She doesn’t believe he hates her so much he wanted to ruin her life. She said that in the heat of the moment, but she’s sure he’s not a spiteful or vengeful person. But what about if he was depressed and drunk, and saw the chance to have some company? She thinks back to when she woke up. He held her all night, he said, to bring her temperature up. Then he brought her food while she was in bed, probably because he felt guilty. Until the third morning, when he chucked her under the shower. Indignation flares within her. How _dare_ he treat her like that, when he was the sole reason she was awake in the first place?

She knows what he was doing on that first day. She knows he was winding her up on purpose, trying to get her to fight back. To not give up. The whole scene about the missing antibiotics was ludicrous, and he pretty much admitted it was when she ridiculed his seven word report. She remembers her thoughts in the shower the following morning. _He’s always been the one person who was prepared to do whatever needed to be done, no matter how unpopular it made him._ She’s often marvelled at that, at how thick-skinned he was that he could just do his job without caring about the consequences to himself. He was a useful person to have on the council; resolute, law-abiding, his actions not weakened by sentiments. A man who could vote to float his own mother, because he followed the law to the last, with no exceptions. 

Something sits in the corner of her mind, a niggling idea, like a phrase written in script too small to be read. She screws up her mind’s eye, trying to focus but she’s tired, and it slips out of sight. Her head is aching and she closes her eyes. She feels herself drifting off, sleep numbing the ache in her heart and easing the anger from her muscles. When she wakes up a couple of hours later she’s calmer, and her head is clearer. And the niggling idea is lit up like a neon sign. 

She’s got him all wrong. 

He doesn’t do what needs to be done because he doesn’t care. He does it because he cares _more_ about the cause at hand than about himself. He floated his own mother because he cared more about conserving resources and ensuring the survival of the human race than his own grief. And he chucked her under the shower because he cared more about her mental well-being than whether she liked him or not. 

He cares so deeply, he’ll do what needs to be done no matter what the cost to himself. In that moment she knows he would never do anything out of selfishness. If he says he drank the moonshine to sleep, she believes him. She’s seen how little he sleeps, how exhausted he gets. With an aching heart, she gets out of bed. It’s only nine pm, so he’s probably still awake. 

...............

In his quarters, Marcus is slowly going crazy. He knows he needs to give her space, let her calm down a little, and then maybe she’ll listen to him. He tries to distract himself with a documentary about Earth, but when it gets to his favourite part, about the northern lights, he’s reminded of how they’d watched them together on the anniversary of his mom’s death, and he switches it off. He’s kicking himself for not being honest with her. Why didn’t he just sit her down and explain what had happened as soon as she woke up? He can’t blame her for being mad; his secrecy makes him look guilty as hell. 

When she doesn’t show up for dinner, he wonders if he should go and talk to her again. His logic tells him it would be better to wait till the morning, when she’s slept on it, but he finds his legs propelling him towards her room anyway. 

He’s halfway there when he rounds a corner and she’s there in front of him, clearly on her way to find him. Her face is tear-stained, her eyes slightly swollen from crying and sleep, but his heart lifts at the sight of her. 

“Abby,” he begins, but she doesn’t speak, just throws her arms around him and holds him close, but it’s not like their first hug, when she wrapped her arms awkwardly around his waist. This time she flies into his arms, her arms winding around his neck and he’s almost overwhelmed by the force of her embrace. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, and his heart shatters. 

“No,” he says at once. “I’m sorry. I should have been honest with you from the beginning.”

She doesn’t say anything, just squeezes him more tightly, and he wonders if she’s trying to kill him. Her size is deceiving, hiding a wiry strength that nearly knocks him off his feet. He envelopes her in his arms, lifting her slightly so as to alleviate her vice-like grip on him. 

Not that he minds. He’s never been hugged like this in his life. 

She draws back to look him in the eyes, finally ready to speak. “I don’t want to fight with you,” she says, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I know you would never do anything like that.”

Relief floods through him. “You do?” 

Her beautiful eyes fill with tears. “Yes. You’re a good person, Marcus.” 

Her words leave him almost breathless. “Thank you,” he says. “That means a lot to me.” Her gentle hands are caressing his hair and she’s looking at him with such unmistakable affection in her deep brown eyes that he can’t think straight. He feels a stirring inside; she’s so close and so beautiful, but things are sliding out of control here, into unknown territory. 

“Abby.” 

“Yes?” 

He’s not even sure what he wants to say, so he brings his hands to her arms to lower them and distance her from him. “I don’t think we want to complicate things more than they already are.” 

She closes her eyes, and nods reluctantly. “You’re right.” She detaches herself from him. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Please,” he smiles, cupping her cheek with his right hand and she leans into him, her eyes closing again at the comfort. Her lashes are long and dark against the pale skin of her cheeks and her lips are slightly parted. She’s so perfect he nearly loses his resolve. _No,_ he thinks. _It would ruin everything._

She covers his hand with hers and turns her head to kiss his palm, then smiles up at him wickedly. Goddamn her, he thinks. “I’m hungry. Do you have any food?”

“Oh, so that’s what all this is about?” he teases gently. “You just want my protein bars?”

She chuckles and he takes her hand and leads her back towards his quarters, where he sits her down on the battered old couch and feeds her everything he can find. It’s the most he’s ever seen her eat.

“I was watching a documentary about Earth,” he says. “Do you feel like watching it?”

She nods through a mouthful of food. “Sure.”

He switches it on and sits down beside her, but they’re both exhausted from the excitement of the spacewalk and the tension of the fight, so it’s no surprise to either of them when they find themselves still on the couch the next morning, her head on his chest and his arm wrapped around her shoulders. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	17. Chapter 17

Falling asleep together on his couch becomes a regular occurrence. 

After the first couple of times he realises that it’s no longer an accident, and he thinks she does too, although neither of them admits it. But after dinner, which they still eat in the mess purely to give their day structure and routine, they both wordlessly make their way to his quarters, where they play chess or watch a movie or sometimes just share a bottle of moonshine and talk late into the night, until their eyes are drooping and neither of them is making coherent sentences anymore. 

He’s not complaining, because he hasn’t slept this well since he woke up from cryo. He no longer needs the pills, and the moonshine is optional; it’s more for the sake of sharing a drink than knocking himself out. Her presence is reassuring, comforting, and he’s not going to chase her away if she’s happy to be there. 

Sometimes they spend the whole night there, and they wake up in the morning to find she’s sprawled across his lap, or curled into his side. Sometimes he’ll wake up in the morning to find he’s alone, and she’s obviously woken up during the night and made her way back to her quarters and the comfort of her bed. Sometimes he wakes up, stiff and needing to pee, and he’ll try to wake her to tell her to go to bed, but she’s sleeping so soundly that he can’t rouse her so he just makes her comfortable and covers her with one of his blankets and then heads to the bathroom and his bed. 

The mornings are never awkward, no matter where they wake up. They don’t talk about it, just get up and start their day after exchanging a sleepy “ _Morning.”_ They move around each other with ease, their bodies perfectly in sync with each other, never avoiding physical contact but never explicitly seeking it either. 

He tries not to think about what this all means. It’s probably natural, he thinks, that two people who are living in isolation will be drawn to each other for comfort. He’s very aware of the risk of their relationship becoming one of codependency, and he’s determined not to let his emotions run away with him, and he’ll do his best to keep hers in check too. He immediately crushes any flutterings of happiness he feels when they’re together, reminding himself that it’s only because he’s the sole person awake, and there’s no one else for her to be with. If the rest of the population weren’t in cryo she wouldn’t give him the time of day, although he’s grateful they’ve found a harmony between them and are getting along better than either of them ever expected. 

It’s as much as he can ask for in their situation. 

……………

  
  


They are still continuing the first aid lessons, and one day Abby has the idea of filming them, so that they can be used to train first aiders and even doctors once the rest of the population wakes up. It’s a good idea, with one exception. 

“You’re not filming me passing out with my pants around my ankles,” he says, horrified. “After all of this I don’t want that to be my legacy.”

She chuckles. “But it’s cute, and also realistic.”

“I’ll be a laughing stock.”

“You won’t. People aren’t that mean, and half the Arkers would probably do the same.”

“Abby. No.” He’s adamant on this, and in the end she lets it go, much to his relief. 

They decide to start filming at the point they are at, and then Abby will go back and record the earlier lessons on her own - “and don’t even _mention_ me fainting,” he warns. She raises her eyebrows and says nothing although he can see she’s trying not to laugh. 

“Okay,” she says demurely, changing the subject. “Sutures.” 

“What?”

“Sutures. You know, stitches, when you cut yourself.”

He folds his arms and glares at her. “You know damn well that’s just as bad.”

“Well, Marcus, we can’t treat everything with Band Aids and kisses, can we? But it’s okay, I have a prosthesis we can use to practice on. It has a consistency very similar to human skin; look.”

She hands him an arm which is terrifyingly human-like, with painful looking cuts and gashes. Well, it looks like an arm, but it’s actually a hollow tube, meant to be worn as a kind of elbow-length glove so that it stays still while the medical student practices suturing. 

“Have you got the rest of the body, too?” he asks half-jokingly as he puts his hand into the false arm. He has images of all kinds of strange body parts packed into the box. 

She smiles knowingly but doesn’t answer his question. “Do you want to start the recording?”

He obliges, and she smiles brightly at the data pad, her face assuming a competent but reassuring expression. It’s incredible how easily she still slips into doctor mode. 

“Lesson twelve,” she says brightly. “Suturing for beginners. This morning I’ll explain to Marcus how to suture a simple wound. Then he’s going to try, and I’ll evaluate his attempt.”

Marcus can’t help smiling to himself. She’s a natural; like one of those television presenters from before the apocalypse. She has exactly the right air: professional and capable and charismatic. 

“Okay. So here’s the needle,” she says, holding up a curved needle threaded with suture thread. “And this is the needle driver. Now watch how I use it to hold the needle, locking it into place, and then pass the needle through one side of the wound - only one part, not both. Then I grasp the other end of the needle with the needle driver - no need to lock it this time - and pull it through. See?” 

He nods, but there’s a fine layer of sweat on his brow at the thought of doing this on a real live flesh.

“Okay. Watch how I pass it through the other side of the wound, opening it with the tissue forceps –“ she does as she says – “and then use the needle driver to pull it through again.”

She sticks her tongue out slightly when she’s concentrating. He’s never noticed that before. 

“Okay. Now we have to tie a knot. Watch carefully.” She wraps the left thread twice around the needle holder, then opens it slightly and grabs the short thread on the right. Using her left hand, she pulls the long thread and the whole thing slides off the needle driver to form a perfect knot. 

“Wow!” He’s impressed. She makes it look so graceful, like an art. “Can you show me that again?”

“Sure. You need three knots anyway.”

She repeats the knot twice and then cuts the thread. “You need to pull the knot to one side, so that it’s not resting directly on the wound. There. Okay, now you try.”

He takes the false arm off and passes it to her, still feeling slightly queasy, The thing is gross. “I’m _never_ going to be able to do this on real flesh,” he’s says with a grimace. 

“You will, if you have to.”

“You overestimate me.” He takes the needle driver and tissue forceps and tries to copy what she’s done. He manages, more or less, but it’s a bit wonky and he can’t get the hang of the knot, so she takes the needle driver in her free hand and helps him to tie it. 

They continue along the wound, alternating stitches, and he’s pleased to see that his become more similar to hers as they go on. Each time she gives a brief evaluation to the camera, pointing out what he did well and what he could have done better. She’s critical but fair, and he can’t help preening slightly at her praise. 

When they’ve finished he stops the recording, and they peer together at the screen to watch it. It’s good, although he wishes his hands weren’t shaking quite so badly. 

“Ugh,” she mutters under her breath. “It’s not my best angle, but it’ll do.”

He tuts. “You don’t have a best angle.” She looks amazing in the video, he doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

She turns indignant eyes to him. “Gee. Thanks.”

He realises too late how she’s taken it. “No! I meant that you don’t – that is. I mean. You always look nice. From every angle.” He’s blushing slightly, but how can she think that? Doesn’t she know how beautiful she is? 

She takes the data pad from him and studies it more closely. “Aw, thanks, honey,” she says, clearly touched.

There’s a poignant silence, and he frowns. “Did you just call me honey?”

“Yup.”

“Don’t call me honey.”

She looks up. “Why not?”

“Because - it seems like we’re a couple, or something.” 

“No, it doesn’t.” She looks confused. “I call people honey when I’m fond of them, like Callie, for example.”

“Oh.” This terrifies him slightly. “And now that includes me?”

“Marcus.” She reaches up to stroke his beard, her eyes scanning his face. “I can’t believe you even have to ask that.” 

He brings his hand to cover hers and lowers it from his cheek but still keeps it in his. “Abby…”

“Yes?” 

It occurs to him that this is one of those moments in life when you have the chance to embark on a whole new journey, in a different direction, and with a different destination. It takes courage, or maybe foolishness, or maybe all that’s really needed is the ability to surrender, to stop resisting and let the tide take you where you’re supposed to be. 

Or, you can choose to stay where you are, with your feet firmly anchored on dry land and your head far from the clouds. It’s boring, and it’s predictable, but it’s safe. 

He chooses safe. “It’s lunchtime, and I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat.”

……………

  
  


That afternoon they go over the plans for the supply run to Mecha station. They need to plan the quickest route and calculate how long it will take them, and how much oxygen they will need. There are two options: the first is to spacewalk to Factory, and then walk through the Ark using oxygen bottles to breathe until they reach Mecha, and the second is to spacewalk to Factory and then again to Mecha. The second is quicker and reduces the amount of oxygen they will need, but means two separate spacewalks and the subsequent risks involved. The first will take much longer – the Ark is huge, and crossing a whole station will take time, but it’s safer as long as they have enough oxygen. 

Moreover, Abby has another idea that she doesn’t think Marcus is going to like. 

“Whilst we’re down on Mecha, we could also go to Farm to get more food. The stocks in the mess aren’t going to last forever.”

“Why don’t we just go on a tour of the Ark whilst we’re at it? Anything else you’d like to visit?” His tone is vaguely sarcastic but his eyes are twinkling.

“I’m serious! Don’t tell me you’re not bored of the soup. Who knows what we might find on Farm Station? We could even get some algae and try to grow something.”

He looks unconvinced. “I don’t disagree in theory, Abby. It just might be a lot to do on our first trip.”

“Yeah, I get that. But is it worth doing a whole other trip? I’d prefer not to jump out of air locks anymore than I have to.”

“Okay. Let’s think this through. We spacewalk to Factory, then from Factory we walk to Farm, pick up food, and then to Mecha to look for the spare circuit boards –“

“No. Mecha first, then Farm. We don’t want to have to carry all the food to Mecha. That’ll just use more oxygen.”

“Okay, yes. That makes sense.” She loves how easily he agrees with her now. Not that he used to disagree with her out of principle; he was an intelligent man and knew when someone was right, but often admitting it to her caused him a pained expression, a little like he was passing a kidney stone. “So from Factory to Mecha and then Farm on the way back. Allowing one hour on each station to search for what we want, we should do the whole trip in six hours.”

“The oxygen bottles hold eight hours of oxygen,” she says. 

“Hmmm.” He strokes his beard thoughtfully, his thumb and forefinger tracing vertical lines either side of his mouth, and she waits for him to speak. “That doesn’t give us a lot of leeway if something goes wrong.”

“What could go wrong? We’re just walking around the Ark. The risky part is the spacewalk, and if that goes wrong… well, we won’t be needing the oxygen anyway, because we’ll be floating through space for eternity.”

“Thank you for pointing that out,” he says wryly. Doubt clouds his face, and she can see he’s wavering. 

“Hey. It’ll be okay. This is going to work. And if we find the parts we’re looking for, it will change our lives. We might get to Earth.”

His expression lifts a little, but he still looks sceptical. “I don’t want to get my hopes up too much,” he says with a frown. She understands where he’s coming from. He’s gone through the whole cycle of grief for the life he’s lost, from denial and anger to depression and then finally accepting his lot. Beginning to have hope again means letting go of the peace he’s found within himself with the risk of being plummeted back into the anger and depression he’s fought so hard to overcome. 

“It’s okay,” she says softly. “I have hope enough for both of us.”

……………

  
  


The night before the supply run they watch an old comedy movie from the Ark’s archive, one neither of them has seen before and which makes them laugh until they have tears coming down their cheeks and their sides are aching. When it’s over they’re still wide awake and buzzing, but it’s late and they really should try to sleep if they want to maintain any kind of schedule. She’s so used to falling asleep on his couch at this point that the idea of going back to her quarters alone and waiting for sleep to take her is less and less appealing. 

He senses her hesitation, and without a word he passes her the blanket and she curls up under it. The couch is more than big enough for her alone. She listens to him moving about in his bedroom for a few minutes and then there’s silence, and she finally falls asleep to the sound of his gentle snoring.

She’s woken up a couple of hours later by a voice muttering rapidly. She lies awake for a moment, blinking in the darkness, trying to make out the words. 

“Push the button,” he’s saying. “Push the button. Do it. You can do it.” Then: “No! No! _No!”_ The last word is almost shouted, and she bolts upright, her heart pounding. She scrambles out of bed - well, off the couch - and tiptoes towards his bedroom door. He’s still in bed, but his agitation and frantic mutterings are clearly signs of a nightmare. 

“Push it,” he says again. “Do it. Do it. No! No!” He thrashes from side to side, as if having a discussion with two invisible people. 

In a flash she crosses the room and sits down on the bed beside him. His face is tense and there’s a sheen of sweat on his brow, his lips are moving continually, his chest is rising and falling rapidly with agitation. She takes his hand and tries to calm him without waking him. 

“Marcus,” she whispers. “It’s okay. I’m here. Shhh.”

“No. No. Do it. No.” His mutterings make no sense, and she wonders what he’s dreaming about. She brings her hand to stroke his hair, and she notes with relief that he stops muttering and begins to breathe more evenly. 

“It’s okay,” she repeats. “Shhhh.” 

His eyes flicker open, blinking to focus, and he breathes deeply. “Abby.” 

“It’s just a nightmare,” she reassures him. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Go back to sleep.”

He rubs his face with his hand, trying to chase the nightmare from his mind. She moves to stand up and leave, but his hand that she’s holding clutches at hers. 

“Stay,” he murmurs, and her heart leaps. 

“Marcus…”

“Please.”

She hesitates. It’s not like they haven’t slept next to each other before, but it’s always been on the couch, never in a bed. There’s something so much more intimate about a bed. _It’s just a piece of furniture,_ she tells herself. She lies down next to him on her side, facing him but not touching him, one hand cushioning her head. “Do you want to tell me what the nightmare was about?”

He shakes his head slightly.

“Okay.” She’s not surprised, but it would do him good to open up. “Have you had it before?”

“Too many times,” he says bitterly. 

“You know, if you tell me about it, we might be able to exorcise it.”

He considers her words for a long moment, then turns to face her, mirroring her position on the bed. “When I was alone,” he begins, and she realises he’s going to tell her after all. “I nearly did an unforgivable thing.”

“I know. You said.” When he doesn’t go on, she prompts him. “Talk to me, Marcus.”

His eyes close, and he swallows. “I nearly woke someone up and left them to die so that I could take their cryopod.”

She sucks in a deep breath. It’s more or less what she suspected, because it’s not like the thought hasn’t crossed her mind too. 

“Are you shocked?” he asks, his expression intense.

“Of course not. You didn’t do it, that’s what counts.”

“I was so close –“

“You didn’t do it,” she repeats firmly. “And that’s all that matters.” She reaches out and cups his cheek, stroking his beard with her thumb. His beard is soft and thick now and she loves it, it gives his face a gentle dignity she could never have envisaged when he was clean-shaven and sleek. It softens the sharp line of his jaw, and eases the haughtiness from his expression. She thinks with a smile how his beard is indicative of their relationship; so soft and smooth when they work together, moving in the same direction, but so prickly and coarse when they go against the grain, rubbing each other up the wrong way.

He closes his eyes at her words. “I hate myself.”

“No. You’re a good man, but you were in a desperate situation.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, go to sleep,” she orders him softly. “I guarantee there’ll be no more nightmares.” 

He gives her a faint smile and closes his eyes obediently, and she watches him until his face relaxes and his breathing deepens. She wonders if he realises how dear he has become to her, how important he is for both her sanity and her physical well-being, as well as her happiness. _Happiness._ She doesn’t recognise the word at first; it’s become as foreign to her as the concept itself, but the truth is he brings her peace, and makes her feel valued, and that’s more happiness than she ever could have hoped for. 

Her eyes grow heavy too, and she thinks that she should probably go back to the couch, but she’s comfortable where she is, in his bed. It’s just another piece of furniture, she thinks as she drifts off. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	18. Chapter 18

He’s woken up the next morning by something soft tickling his nose. In his sleepy state he instinctively moves away but no matter where he puts his nose he still encounters the tickly thing. Begrudgingly he opens his eyes and his gaze falls on Abby’s sleeping form next to him, curled away from him but so close he can feel her warmth. Her hair - so much hair - is messy and tangled on the pillow. 

So  _ that’s _ what was tickling his nose. 

Rather than trying to move away from the hair, he gathers the silky strands gently and makes a ponytail which he places over her shoulder, taking care not to wake her. For a moment he wonders why she’s here, but as his brain begins to function he remembers the nightmare, and him asking her to stay. He's finally confessed his deepest secret to her, and she wasn’t shocked or disgusted. He feels a lightness in his heart now that that burden of guilt has gone. 

He ponders the fact that them sharing his bed is apparently now a thing. He likes her being there; he’s gotten used to waking up on the couch with her by his side. He smiles to himself. Neither of them wants to be more alone than they have to be. He’s grateful more than ever for the friendship they’ve found, the comfort and understanding they share without ever crossing that delicate line into something which could easily turn messy. It would be so easy to let themselves fall into intimacy simply out of convenience. 

She stirs and stretches a little, and rolls onto her back, so that now she’s resting against him. Blinking, she stares at the ceiling, and then turns her head to look at him. Her face breaks into a lazy smile when she sees he’s awake, and he ignores his body’s reaction to those sleepy brown eyes gazing up at him.

“Morning.”

“Morning,” she says, her voice deep and husky with sleep. “Any more nightmares?” 

“No, none. I slept like a baby.” He searches her eyes for signs of contempt, but there’s none, just the open warmth he’s used to seeing in them now. “Thank you for being here. And listening.” 

“You know you can always talk to me. No more secrets, okay?” She rubs her eyes gently, chasing away the sleep. “You ready for the spacewalk of a lifetime?”

He winces. “I guess.” 

“Come on then.” She slaps his thigh lightly to rouse him to action but he groans and buries his face in the pillow. 

“You’re such a tyrant.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Would you like me to bring you breakfast in bed?”

He grins. “Would you?”

“No. Get your ass out of bed.” And with that she’s up and out of the door, leaving him shaking his head and chuckling inwardly at how quickly she switches from soft to sassy. She certainly keeps him on his toes. 

……………

An hour later they make their way to the airlock where they suit up, this time with oxygen bottles because they won’t be able to use the oxygen feed from Alpha once they get to Factory station. 

“Eight hours,” she says. “It’ll be enough, right?”

“It has to be. What we can’t do in eight hours, we don’t do.” He bends to pick up her helmet but before he places it over her head, he tucks some strands of hair that have escaped from her braid behind her ear so that they won’t be in her face. “So much hair,” he mutters affectionately. 

She’s smiling as he helps her attach the helmet, making sure the oxygen bottle feed is connected properly so that oxygen fills the helmet, and then she helps him with his. He picks up the rucksack containing a flashlight, the circuit board they need to replace, and a power pack to open the internal doors, since there’s no electricity on those stations either and it’s easier to do it this way than to have to head to Tesla Station to activate the solar panels and reroute power to three whole stations - four including Tesla. The external airlock doors are always operational, powered by separate solar panels.

“Ready?” His voice is tinny over the radio.

She nods in response, although she’s feeling nauseous with nerves. She holds out her gloved hand, and when he takes it her stomach settles a little. Together they step into the airlock, and he attaches the inactive oxygen feed to his suit. They don’t need it for oxygen, but as a tether to the Ark, so that they don’t go floating off into space if they miss the airlock on Factory station. In some way, they will be able to pull themselves along it and get back to Alpha.

They’ve calculated the trajectory they need perfectly. In the vacuum of space there’s no resistance, and an object in motion will keep moving in the same direction for eternity. Marcus has a small jet pack on his back which will allow him to modify their course so that they hit their destination. Abby is strapped to him, and he wraps his arms around her from behind, so that he’ll take her with him.

“Hold me tight,” she reminds him, and she instantly feels his arms tighten around her.

“Of course.”

“Initiating depressurization.” She presses the buttons to begin the depressurization sequence, and once the valves have been purged she pulls the lever to open the external doors, and they are teetering on the edge of nothing. 

“Okay. One. Two. Three.” Marcus flicks the switch on his jet pack, and they immediately shoot out into the void. 

The speed they are travelling at takes Abby’s breath away. The Ark is whizzing past in a blur, and the airlock on Factory, just a tiny window a few seconds ago, looms larger and larger. They are flying rather than floating, and the combination of adrenaline and absolute breathtaking fear causes an almost hysterical laugh to escape her.

As they approach the airlock Marcus eases the power on the jet pack and adjusts their trajectory by a few degrees, and Abby reaches out to press the external door control. The door whooshes open, and they land gently in the airlock. Marcus detaches the oxygen feed from himself and loops it around a hook, then opens the internal airlock doors into the station. Once they’re safely inside they grin at each other through their helmets, flushed and exhilarated from the ride.

“That was more fun than I expected!” she says, and he laughs in agreement. 

“Right? Here, help me take the jetpack off. I don’t need to carry it all the way to Mecha.”

She helps him unstrap it, her fingers in the gloves fumbling with the clips, and they leave it next to the airlock to be picked up on the way back. “Let’s go,” she says, eager to get to Mecha to search for the circuit boards. She slips her hand into his and they set off down the corridor, Marcus lighting the way with the flashlight.

Factory Station is hauntingly silent, its lack of inhabitants discernible by the absence of life systems which still thrum gently in the background on Alpha. It’s the kind of noise you only notice when it’s gone, Abby notes with curiosity. Now the only sound is the soft in-out hissing of their breathing and their footsteps. 

This is where all of the products needed on the Ark were manufactured, an endless recycling of everything from clothes and furniture to electronics and computers, so the station is usually alive with clattering machines and humming conveyor belts. The production plants have been still for nearly five years now, but there are still some products left unfinished on the machines.

Abby stops to eye a pile of clothes stacked by a conveyor belt. “If we have time, I want to have a look through these on the way back.”

Marcus gives an exaggerated eye roll that she can just about see through his helmet. “You really want to go shopping at a time like this?”

She laughs. “Shut up. It won’t take long.”

“That’s what they all say,” he says darkly, and she has to laugh because she knows he’s had zero experience of taking women shopping. Shopping didn’t exist in the Ark, where clothes were simply rationed out as and when they were absolutely needed. 

They carry on through Factory until they get to the doors separating it from Farm station. Normally, the doors are open, but they automatically close when the oxygen supply is halted, thus preventing the contents of one station from being sucked into the vacuum of another. Now there is no oxygen anywhere, so it’s safe to open them, although the lack of power means that they have to use the battery pack they brought with them. 

The doors swish open, and they proceed into Farm station, and here the desolation is even more evident. Once teeming with plant life which provided nourishment for the entire population of the Ark, the station is now a wilted cemetery. The plants are dead, because there’s no oxygen and no light, but haven’t rotted because decomposition requires oxygen. Abby shivers, and not from the cold.”

“It’s so creepy,” she says. “Like the living dead.”

“You’re right,” he returns. “It’s like a movie I once saw, Attack of the Zombie Plants.”

She looks at him with as much surprise as she can muster in the dark. “You watched a movie called Attack of The Zombie Plants?” It doesn’t sound like his type of thing at all. She thought he had slightly more sophisticated tastes than that. 

“Hey,” he says defensively. “Thirteen months is a long time to spend alone. I was branching out into new genres.”

She giggles at this. “Did you like it?”

“Biggest load of garbage I’ve ever seen.”

Thank God. “I’m glad.” She takes the flashlight off him, and points it in the opposite direction. “There’s the repository. We’ll stop there on the way back.” 

“Okay. But let’s keep going. We don’t know how long we’re going to need on Mecha.”

Abby’s only too glad to leave the eerie station behind, so they carry on, and it’s not long before they’re standing in front of the doors between Farm and Mecha. She has butterflies in her tummy as Marcus opens the doors with the battery pack. What they find here could change their lives. 

They make their way through the workshops, past the place where Cuyler Ridley had held her hostage, making her shiver at them memory of the cold steel against her neck, until they come to the store room, a huge area with rows upon rows of floor to ceiling shelving containing all kinds of electronic and machine parts. Abby has no idea what any of them are and she’s guessing Marcus doesn’t either. They look at each other in dismay, wondering where to start. 

“You start that end,” he says, “and I’ll start this end.”

“What about if the parts we need are on the top shelves?” she asks, surveying the shelves towering above her. 

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. First let’s check out the shelves we can reach.”

She can’t fault his logic, so they set off in opposite directions, and she’s glad she can still hear him through the comm system in her helmet because it’s terrifying being completely alone here. She scans the shelves, reading the names of the parts, but most of it is gibberish to her, just codes with letters and numbers. She’s startled when she hears Marcus give an exclamation of annoyance. 

“What the…?!”

“What is it?” 

“I just found a whole box of faulty wristbands. I thought Sinclair said he’d managed to reuse everything.”

She narrows her eyes, trying to remember what Sinclair had said. Everything was a blur after the death wave had destroyed Earth and sending the kids to the ground was no longer an option. “He did… I think.” She can hear him tutting to himself and it makes her smile. He’ll always be the same Marcus, but at the same time he’s softened, and his reaction is now one of quiet indignation instead of stern reproach and demands for reports. 

They carry on searching in silence, communicating only when they need to, and finally meet in the middle, having found nothing even slightly resembling the circuit board they need. 

“I guess we need to try the top shelves,” he says dejectedly. They find a ladder with wheels on the bottom and smaller ones on the top that hook onto a rail, so that it scrolls along the shelves. Marcus tests the stability of it, shaking it with his hands. “It’ll be easier if you go up. I’ll be too heavy for you to push along.” 

She agrees, so she puts one foot on the first rung and begins to climb, taking it slowly because climbing ten feet in a full spacesuit is hard work, and will consume oxygen more quickly. Once she’s at the top he pushes her along so that she can check all of the boxes on the top shelf. To her dismay, there are no circuit boards.  They search two aisles of shelves like this before she finds what they’re looking for. 

“Okay, here are the circuit boards! Let me see.” She rummages around, and holds one up triumphantly. It looks similar to the burnt out ones from their cryopods, but who knows if it’s the same? “Here. Does this look like the one we need?” She passes it down to him, and he peers at it. 

He pulls the burnt out one from the rucksack to compare. “It looks more or less the same,” he says. “Are there any others?”

She pulls out some more boxes. “Yes. Here. And here.” She climbs down to him, and they study the new boards together, but none of them are identical to the burnt one. He gives a sigh of frustration. “Maybe there  _ are  _ no spares. Maybe they had to use every single one for the cryopods.”

“Let’s take these anyway,” she says, ever hopeful. “This one looks really similar. Maybe it will work, or we can modify it.”

“Okay. Let’s get out of here. We used way too much oxygen doing this.” 

“Wait. We’d better take two of each. If we  _ can  _ use them, we’ll need two.” She climbs back up the ladder to take another of each of the three circuit boards.

“Slowly coming down,” Marcus warns, but no sooner has he spoken than she misses her footing and slips, plummeting the last six feet onto him and knocking him off his feet. She crashes back against the shelves behind her, her helmet striking the hard metal. 

“Uff, sorry!” she groans, trying to roll off him because the oxygen bottle on her back is digging into her uncomfortably. There’s a strange hissing noise and it takes her a second to realise that in her fall she’s detached his oxygen feed from his helmet. She uses all her strength to heave herself up to look at him. His expression is total panic, his eyes wide and his mouth gasping for air. He's suffocating inside his helmet. 

“Okay Marcus, stay calm,” she reassures him. She grabs the feed and plugs it back into his helmet, and he takes an enormous gulp of air, and then another, and other, blinking at her gratefully. 

“Thank you,” he says when his lungs are full of oxygen. He stands up, and pulls her to her feet. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. It’s lucky I’m wearing a helmet, or I’d probably have concussion from how hard my head hit the shelves. Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”

“I’m fine! Just a bit winded.” He rubs his stomach where she crashed into him.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened.” She squeezes his arm. “Come on, let’s go.” She just wants to get back to Alpha at this point. She debates whether it’s even worth stopping to get food and clothes. They’ve used way more oxygen then they should have and he lost at least thirty minutes worth in the few seconds his feed disconnected. The thought of doing this again fills her with dread, though, so she decides it’s best if they make a quick stop, no more than ten minutes on each station. 

They make their way out of Mecha and back into Farm, Marcus closing the doors behind them in preparation for when the stations will be oxygenated again in the future. Abby leads the way towards the repository, where they should be able to find food supplies. The food will be old, of course, but the lack of oxygen means it will be vacuum packed and therefore perfectly conserved.

Marcus opens the door to the repository, and Abby follows him in, but the sight that greets them stops them both in their tracks. The room, which consists of shelving units full of products similar to the store room on Mecha station, is a wreck. Shelves are upended or tipped over, their products all over the floor, and there are wires and debris hanging from the ceiling.

“What the hell happened here?” gasps Abby, but as they move further into the room the explanation becomes clear. The room has an external wall, which has been penetrated by a piece of space debris; by the looks of it a piece of an old disused satellite left in orbit around the Earth. The satellite has crashed into the Ark like a steam train into a pile of boxes, ripping a hole in the side of the station and destroying the repository. It’s firmly wedged into the hole it has created, but other bits of the wall have been breached and the emptiness of space is clearly visible beyond. It’s lucky there’s no air on Farm station or the contents of the repository would have been sucked out and lost forever.

“How is this possible? Nothing like this has ever happened before.” Abby can’t quite get her head around it. “It would have been a disaster if everyone was still awake.”

Marcus shines his flashlight around the room, trying to gauge the full extent of the damage. “It would never have happened if everyone was still awake. The Ark is fitted with external sensors which detect space debris and move the Ark out of its path. The sensors aren’t working here because the power is off. It was always a risk.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know that. “Damn.” She surveys the scene in dismay. There is food everywhere. “Should we try to move as much food as possible out of the repository?” 

“We don’t have much time. We can’t risk running out of oxygen.”

“Okay. We move what we can in ten minutes, then we’re out of here.” She begins picking up packets of flour from the floor. “Here, I’ll pass it to you, and you take it outside.” 

They work quickly, Abby passing him vacuum packed packets of flour, powdered vegetable protein, dehydrated vegetables and algae, dehydrated mushroom, dried soya bean curd, powdered oats and other equally boring but nutritionally valuable food which he piles up outside the door. 

“Okay,” he says after ten minutes. “That’s it. We can’t carry all this back to Alpha anyway. The rest will have to stay here.”

She glances around the room. There’s still so much they haven’t taken, and if the outer wall is compromised anymore, the whole lot could be lost for good. 

“Two more minutes,” she pleads, eyeing some packets on the only shelves still standing. “I think that’s sugar back there.”

Sugar was a treat on the Ark, since it’s not essential for human survival, but a little was produced every year and rationed out very carefully. Naturally it sold on the black market for ridiculous prices, and Abby remembers a case brought before the council where people were exchanging a whole month’s worth of food rations for a teaspoonful of sugar. As a doctor Abby has never seen the appeal; it does more harm than good, and the sweetness makes her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth. 

With one exception. She loves oatmeal cookies, and why shouldn’t she and Marcus have something nice, given the deal they’ve been dealt? She makes her way towards the small packets of brown granules, stepping over the packs of food and the twisted metal of the broken storage units.

“Abby, no!” calls Marcus as she begins to climb over some shelves. “It’s too dangerous - that whole unit is about to fall!”

“I’ll be quick,” she says, ignoring him and reaching up to take two packets from the precarious structure. She slides them off carefully and turns around, holding them up triumphantly. “Got it!”

He’s shaking his head at her recklessness, although she can see he’s smiling inside his helmet. As she grins back at him his smile fades and panic flits across his eyes. “Abby, watch out!!”

She turns, confused, in the direction of the shelving unit, but it’s not that he’s looking at. The shelves are still in place, teetering but erect, but to the left of them the wall between the repository and the room next door is swaying dangerously. Her heart flies into her mouth as she realises what’s going to happen and she stumbles over the shelves on the floor, desperately trying to get out of the trajectory of the falling wall. She’s nearly there when her foot gets caught underneath one of the structures and she tumbles to the floor, just as the wall crashes onto her, pinning her beneath its weight. A searing pain shoots through her left thigh as something sharp and metal pierces both her spacesuit and her flesh.

She lies where she is, gasping for breath, the wind completely knocked out of her. She can feel a wet warmth on her thigh, and she knows she’s bleeding. She can’t move, she can’t even turn her head because of the helmet. “Marcus,” she calls weakly, and she’s relieved to hear him moving towards her. 

“Abby!! Are you okay?” His voice is distraught. “It’s okay, I’m right here. I’m going to get you out.” She feels the weight of the wall being eased off her slightly, but as it does, the wetness on her thigh increases with pulsing regularity.

“Marcus! No!” He stops. “I’m bleeding,” she says, her voice hoarse with the pain. “It could be my femoral artery. The weight of the wall is stopping the bleeding.”

He stares at her, his eyes dark with panic. “What can I do?” 

She grits her teeth against the pain. “You need to get a tourniquet. Stop the bleeding.” She exhales. “And then stitch the wound.”

He looks around him wildly. “With what?”

He’s right; there’s nothing here he can use. There’s only one option. “You have to go back to Alpha, and get my medical bag.”

“What?” He shakes his head. “No! I’m not leaving you here! I’ll carry you back.”

“I won’t make it,” she whispers. “I’ll bleed out. Go, Marcus. Please.”

“Abby, no.” His voice is thick with dread. “There has to be another way.” 

“How much oxygen do I have?” She almost doesn’t want to hear the answer. He leans over her to read the gauge on her tank. 

“Just under a quarter.”

“About ninety minutes,” she says. “You can do it. Go.” 

“Fuck, Abby.” He looks like he’s about to cry. “I don’t want to leave you here.”

“Listen to me,” she says urgently. “I’m a doctor. You have to do this. Bring back more oxygen, and my medical bag.” She softens her tone for one last plea. “Please, Marcus.”

He nods, realising that she’s right. “Okay,” he says, galvanized into action. “Okay. I’m going. You’re gonna be okay. I’ll be right back, I promise.” He reaches out to squeeze her shoulder, then he stands up and heads out of the door, grabbing the rucksack as he goes, and she hears his footsteps echoing down the station. 

Abby rests her head back against the floor and tries to calm her breathing. A tear slides down her cheek, the strength she’d found to spur Marcus into action ebbing away, and she suddenly feels very scared, and very alone. 

She closes her eyes, and waits for him to come back. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  



	19. Chapter 19

It’s all he can do to keep from sprinting back to the airlock, the panic in his veins propelling his legs ever faster, but he knows he can’t. He has to walk quickly but steadily, to preserve his oxygen. His heart is already pounding at the thought of leaving her all alone, injured and bleeding, in that airless station with a breached wall. Bile rises in his throat, and he swallows it down. He’s never felt such a helpless sensation of simultaneously wanting to be in two places at once; with her, holding her and reassuring her, and at the same time fetching the supplies he needs to save her. He glances at his watch, and his heart lurches. Seven minutes of the ninety she has left have passed, and he hasn’t even got to Factory yet.

Eighty-three minutes, and he’ll lose her forever. 

He has to calm his mind. He needs to do the spacewalk, and if he goes to pieces, she _will_ die alone on Farm station. He concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other. Each step is one step closer to saving her. 

He focuses on the first aid lessons to clear his mind. He’ll need to give her a local anaesthetic, but he doesn’t know if that will be in her medical bag or not. Mentally he searches medical, locating what he needs so that when he gets there he can go straight to it. Then he needs to suture her wound, something he’s been hoping he never has to do. The thought of the needle piercing flesh still makes him queasy even if he doesn’t faint anymore. He repeats her lessons in his head, imagining what he’s going to have to do so that when he does it to her it’ll feel like he’s already done it. She’ll be able to talk him through it anyway, if she’s still conscious. 

_If_ she’s still conscious. 

He’s going to need scissors, to cut the spacesuit, and gauze and bandages to dress the wound. And oxygen. By the time he gets to Factory, he’s feeling calmer, and the panic has given way to adrenaline which is giving him a quick-thinking lucidity. On a whim he grabs the pile of clothes from the conveyor belt. It doesn’t take more than five seconds of his time and it’s more a gesture of hope; she _will_ survive and she _will_ get to wear them. 

Seventy-five minutes. 

He gets to the airlock and straps on the jetpack and the oxygen feed tethering him to Alpha, then grabs the rucksack and the bundle of clothes and he’s out of the door and shooting across to Alpha. The external airlock door is still open but he’s travelling too fast and he has to grab hold of the outside of the airlock to stop himself before he swings inside and slams his hand on the lever to close the doors. As soon as the repressurisation is complete and he can enter Alpha he rips off his helmet and dumps it unceremoniously on the ground with the jetpack, his oxygen bottle, the clothes and the rucksack. Here on oxygen-filled Alpha Station, he _can_ sprint and he takes off at full pelt towards medical. 

Sixty-two minutes. 

In medical he finds her bag. Her suture kit is in it, and some dressings, but he can’t see the anaesthetic so he rushes into the store cupboard, thanking the universe she had the good sense to order the medicines in alphabetical order. He finds the box of phials he needs, then grabs scissors and adhesive tape from the drawer. He slips everything into her bag and checks his watch.

Fifty-two minutes. 

He picks up the medical bag and runs down the corridor back to the airlock. The oxygen bottles are kept in a closet there, and he pulls out the first two his hands fall on. He checks the gauge; they are both full, so he straps one onto his back, puts his helmet back on and steps into the airlock. 

Forty-five minutes. He can do it. 

……………

On Farm station, Abby is cold. The spacesuits are thermal and are designed to maintain body temperature even during spacewalks, but lying still beneath the wall means that she is rapidly losing body heat. The upside of this is that her extremities are beginning to numb, and she can no longer feel the piercing pain in her leg. The downside is that it’s becoming more and more difficult to stay awake. She doesn’t want to lose consciousness, she wants to be awake and functioning when he gets back to her.

When he gets back. Not if. There’s no doubt in her mind that he’ll make it to Alpha and back. She can’t let herself even contemplate the alternative. She is _not_ going to die alone here. 

She tries to focus on her breathing. She calculates it takes about ten seconds to complete one deep breath, and if she has ninety minutes of oxygen, that’s five hundred and forty breaths. The idea scares her a little. That’s only five hundred and forty more times she can fill her lungs with the life-sustaining gas. _He’ll be back_ , she tells herself. He’s level-headed and not prone to panic, and she has absolute faith in him that he won’t leave her here to die. 

She closes her eyes, mentally finding the peace she’d felt that morning, when she’d woken up next to him. His lopsided smile and soft twinkling eyes fill her mind, and she feels the tension leave her body. She feels almost weightless, like she’s floating. He’s changed so much, she thinks. His tutting over the box of faulty wristbands on Mecha makes her roll her eyes like old times but now she knows his gentle side, the Marcus who’s there as soon as she needs him, folding her into his embrace, holding her against him until her tears stop, chasing away her sadness with his murmured words and soothing hands. The Marcus who has no problems seeking comfort from her when he needs it, but always waits for her to initiate physical contact. And she always does, of course. Life is too short to pass up free Marcus cuddles; they’ve become one of her favourite things. She ghosts a smile. _He’s_ become one of her favourite things.

Her eyes are drooping, and she counts her breaths to fight the drowsiness. The last thought that goes through her head as she succumbs to the blackness is that she really, really needs to tell him that. 

……………

He makes it back to Factory station in record time, although he feels a bit silly zooming through space holding Abby’s medical bag in his hand, a bit like the nanny in that children’s movie the kids on the Ark loved watching. Mary something-or-other. He enters the airlock on Factory and loops the tether around the hook like before.

Thirty-two minutes. 

As soon as he sets foot out of the airlock, he realises something is wrong. He takes a step, and floats up into the air. Something’s wrong with the gravity. He tries again, and floats again. What the heck is happening, he thinks. Gravity on the Ark has never failed, it’s one of the true constants of life on the space station. He takes a couple more steps, and this time his feet stay on the floor. _What?_

Gravity hasn’t failed, but it _is_ failing. Gravity on the Ark is created by the rotation of the ring stations, using centripetal force. In all of his forty-four years, he’s never known it to not be there. It must be something to do with the damage on Farm, he reasons, and at this his heart skips a beat. _Abby._ The weight of the wall is what is stopping her bleeding to death. If there’s no gravity, the wall has no weight. 

His stomach knots, but then he has a flash of inspiration. If he uses the jetpack inside the Ark, he can travel the length of a whole station in next to no time. He’ll be back with her within minutes. He can’t go quite as fast due to the enclosed spaces inside the station but it’ll be faster than half-walking, half-floating. He tightens his grip on the medical bag and the oxygen bottle and activates the jetpack. This should be child’s play. 

He’s wrong. No sooner has he touched the button than he’s shot forward at an alarming speed, and the intermittent gravity just means that he’s pulled in slightly different directions to what he expected. Realising he’s veering towards a bank of machines, he tries to straighten himself but overcompensates and crashes headfirst into the wall opposite.

“Uff,” he groans. That hurt. He glances back and is pleased to see he’s covered half of the station in less than ten seconds. He braces himself and sets off again, this time managing to control the trajectory of the jetpack until he has to take a left turn, and his speed means he overshoots into another wall. 

“Fuck,” he mutters. The helmet is protecting his head from the crashes but he doesn’t want to damage it to the point that it’s compromised. “Once more.” He pushes himself up and shoots forward again, this time covering most of Farm until he sees the door to the repository. He tries to slow down and manages to skid to a halt just feet from the door, but he’s taken out a row of zombie plants in the process. The fact doesn’t even register in his brain though; all he can think about is getting back to Abby.

He enters the repository and is dismayed to see that the gravity is even weaker here. Food is floating everywhere, and the collapsed shelving units are hovering perilously. He uses the flashlight to pick out her inert body, and his heart twists in fear. She’s so still, he can’t even see her chest rising and falling, and the way she’s floating a foot from the floor makes her seem even more lifeless. He scrambles across the debris, slipping and sliding in his desperation to get to her.

“Abby. Abby! I’m here. It’s okay.” He wills her to move, to show any sign of life. He can’t have lost her already. 

As he draws closer he can hear the faint hiss of her oxygen tank, and relief floods through him. _She’s breathing._ He shakes her a little, but she doesn’t open her eyes. How do you wake up somebody who’s inside a spacesuit, he wonders in frustration. Well, the important thing is that she’s alive, and that she stays alive until he stops the bleeding. He disconnects her oxygen bottle, which is nearly empty, and connects the new one, and then he can breathe more easily too. He now has a whole eight hours to save her.

At least moving the wall is easier than he’d foreseen. He just gives it a gentle shove and it drifts away, over to the other side of what used to be the room next door. He can see the gaping hole in her space suit now, and the sharp sliver of metal which had pierced her leg. It’s not implanted in her, but she must have slid onto it as she fell, causing it to slice into her flesh. He’s relieved he doesn’t have to remove it, because that would be an added complication. There’s a strange phenomenon though. Her blood is floating in big shiny red globules. He bats one away, and it breaks into smaller globules, which glide off silently into the dark. Blood is still pumping out but much more slowly than he’d expected, one small blob every couple of seconds, due to the low pressure. He clips the flashlight onto his suit and opens the medical bag.

The first thing to do is stop the bleeding, so he takes out the tourniquet and slides it under her thigh three inches above the cut in her suit, then loops the free end through the buckle and back on itself. He pulls as tightly as he can, then twists the windlass three times. He wonders if he should twist it a fourth time, but the bleeding is already visibly slowing. It’s enough. Taking the scissors, he cuts her spacesuit to expose the wound which is about four inches long but fairly clean. It makes his stomach ache anyway. He disinfects it as best as he can, although there shouldn’t be any bacteria in a zero g environment, and manages to administer the anesthesia with no problem. His head doesn’t even spin as he sinks the syringe into her thigh. He wishes she would wake up so that she can talk him through it. He’d feel safer with her guidance. However, her eyes stay obstinately closed, so he takes a deep breath to steady his shaking hands, and takes the needle and needle driver out of the bag which is hovering conveniently next to him. It takes him five attempts to thread the needle, and he’s beginning to lose his patience, but he finally manages it.

_Hold the needle, lock it into place, and then pass the needle through one side of the wound._

Her words echo in his head, and he locks the needle into the driver, and prepares to sink it into one side of the wound as she’d shown him. He grips her leg underneath with his hand to keep her still, but the problem is he needs his other hand to hold the tissue forceps, but she bobs away from him as soon as he touches her if he doesn’t hold her.

He tries a couple of times, but there’s no way he can keep her still _and_ effectively stitch the wound. He’s on the verge of tears at this point. How the hell can he stitch her when he can’t keep her still? It was like trying to stitch a wound on water, and of course every time she moves she’s no longer in the beam of the flashlight, so he can’t even _see_ the wound. He gives a groan of frustration. He has to find another way.

He knows he can leave the tourniquet on for two hours before she starts to suffer damage to her muscles. If he can just cover and close the wound, he could jetpack her back to Alpha. Everything would be so much easier there. He needs more than a bandage though; he needs something that will wrap tightly around her leg and hold the wound closed. He searches her bag but finds nothing, and he sighs in frustration.

Vacuum-packed packets of food are hanging in the air like celestial bodies, and it gives him an idea. He needs to vacuum pack her leg, and the corn-based wrap used to preserve the food would be perfect. It has a stretchy elastic quality, and sticks to itself once it’s pulled tightly around the object it is covering. Maybe he can empty some food packets and use the wrap for her leg. He takes the flashlight and scans the room, and his eyes fall on a cylindrical object suspended above him. It’s a whole _roll_ of the corn-based wrap. He just has to try and reach it. He pushes his legs straight until his feet make contact with the floor. From there he’s able to push himself upwards towards the roll, but in his enthusiasm he pushes too hard and his head hits the ceiling with a clunk. He manages to grab the wrap and then pushes against the ceiling to send himself back down to Abby. He comes to rest beside her without much ado and pulls her towards him. It takes just a moment to wind the wrap around her leg, although his gloved hands fumble with the transparent film. When the wound is safely encased in layers of wrap and there’s no blood anywhere, he tapes her spacesuit closed and closes the medical bag. Time to get her out of there.

He pulls her into his arms and turns her towards him, so that he can see her face through the helmet.

“Abby,” he says, and his heart skips when her eyes flutter open. “I’m taking you back to Alpha. Can you hold on to me?” 

She doesn’t speak but he feels her arms tighten around him. “That’s great,” he smiles. He loops his arm through the medical bag and then clutches her to him, then activates the jetpack to take them out of the repository. 

This time he’s less panicky and more aware of how much power they need, so he’s able to manoeuvre them through Farm and Factory with minimal collisions. Within minutes they’re back at the airlock and shooting through space to Alpha. The jetpack dies halfway but they continue their trajectory towards the airlock, and when they’re inside they collapse in a heap on the floor whilst the airlock fills with oxygen. 

It’s a relief to pull his helmet off and breathe normally again, and as soon as he’s discarded his own he unlatches hers too. He brushes her hair out of her face and strokes her cheek. 

“Abby, wake up.”

She doesn’t stir, and he doesn’t know if she’s actually passed out or just asleep. Fear rises in his chest. He checks her pulse but it’s regular. 

“Abby, please. I need you to wake up and help me.” Tears of panic well in his eyes, and he brushes them away. “At least just gives me a sign you can hear me.”

Her eyes flutter a little, and her lips part. “Marcus… so tired...”

It’s barely a whisper but his heart soars. “It’s okay. I’m gonna stitch you up. Just don’t yell at me if it’s wonky, okay? I’ll do my best. I promise.” He presses a kiss to her forehead. She’s cold, so cold. He decides to leave her spacesuit on but takes his own off and wraps it around her. 

Then he opens the medical bag, and gets to work. 

  
  
………………

  
  


Abby recognises the bright lights of medical as soon as she opens her eyes, the familiar white glare both comforting and unsettling. What’s she doing here? Her leg is throbbing and her throat is so dry she can barely swallow. She licks her lips but her tongue feels like sandpaper. 

There’s a warmth by her left arm, and she glances down to see Marcus’s dark head resting on the bed next to her, his hair soft and tousled. She runs her hand through it, feathering the silky locks between her fingers. “Marcus.”

He’s awake in an instant, his eyes blurry and confused, but his face lights up when he sees she’s awake. 

“Hey. How are you feeling?”

“My leg hurts.”

“Well, you have twenty-stitches in it.”

“Twenty?” She blinks, and memories of being trapped under the wall come flooding back. “Oh, God. The wall. On Farm.” She closes her eyes and licks her lips again. “Could you get me some water?”

She senses him moving away from her, and then he’s back with a glass, and he helps her to sit up so that she can drink. The water clears her head a little. “Let me see the wound.”

She’s still wearing the spacesuit but the leg is cut open, and she can see a dressing applied with way too much adhesive tape. She looks at him in awe. “You did this?”

“Yes.” She can see the apprehension in his eyes. “Do you want to see my handiwork?”

“Okay.” 

He helps her remove the tape holding the dressing in place, and pulls it back enough for her to see the long line of slightly too big, occasionally wonky stitches. She’s dumbfounded. It might not be perfect and she’s definitely going to have a scar but he’s closed the wound effectively and it should heal in no time. 

“Is it okay?”

“It’s – it’s perfect,” she tells him, her eyes filling with tears. “I can’t believe you did that. It’s amazing.”

“They’re not very straight,” he says apologetically. “I did my best, but –“

“It’s perfect,” she repeats. “You saved my life. Thank you.” She shakes her head, remembering her quest for sugar which had caused the whole thing. “I’m sorry,” she says. “All this over some sugar.”

“I told you it wasn’t safe,” he scolds her gently. “One day you might actually listen to me.”

“Oh, hey,” she says. “Don’t go getting all high and mighty on me. You didn’t notice the wall either.”

“Even still, if you’d listened to me when I told you to come back, you wouldn’t have been hit by the wall. You really are the most infuriatingly headstrong woman I’ve ever met.”

“I am _not_ –“ 

“You are. You just do whatever you want, without a thought for the consequences –“ 

She knows he’s more worried than angry so she silences his diatribe the easiest way she can, with her lips on his, and he stills in surprise before his mouth opens against hers. A giddy warmth rushes through her body as their tongues find each other in a tentative, shy meeting which is over before it’s begun, and he’s pulled away. 

“We can’t,” he whispers. 

“Yes we can,” she breathes. “It’s not complicated. I love you.”

He closes his eyes. “Don’t say that.”

“I love you,” she repeats. She runs her hand through his hair, then down his cheek, her thumb tracing his eyebrow and cheekbone, her fingers in his beard. “I love you.”

“God, you’re stubborn.”

“What are you afraid of?”

He squeezes his eyes closed, and when he opens them again she can see sorrow in their dark depths. “I’m going to fix your cryopod, and you’re going to go back into cryo. You’re a doctor, and our people need you. Clarke needs you. Your feelings for me can’t get in the way of that.”

She shakes her head. “We’ll fix both of our cryopods, and we’ll go together.”

“Abby…”

“Marcus, it’s too late. My feelings are already in the way.” She kisses him again, softly, and he can’t help responding despite himself. “We go together, or not at all,” she whispers. “I’m not leaving you.”

He’s not convinced, and she can see he’s battling with himself. “I don’t see how I can go back into cryo, Abby. I’m more useful here, I know how to stop the cryopods malfunctioning. I can keep everyone safe.”

She draws back slightly in confusion. “What?”

“I won’t be needed on the ground. There are plenty of guards. It’s more important for me to stay here, and keep watch over the cryopods.”

A lump forms in her throat at the sacrifice he’s prepared to make. “But we’ve been trying to fix our cryopods, so that we can go back into cryo. _Both_ of them.”

“No,” he says bleakly. “I’ve been trying to fix _yours.”_

Her heart is aching so much she feels like it’s going to break, and tears are pricking at her eyes. “No…” She takes a shaky breath. “No. We have no idea what’s going to happen. Maybe we can’t fix either of the cryopods. Maybe everyone else’s will malfunction and none of us will get to Earth. Maybe we’ll work out why the cryopods are malfunctioning and stop it happening at all.” She stops, trying to steady herself. “What I _do_ know is we have to take every chance at happiness we can.” She reaches to touch him, running her hand through his hair and down to his beard. “All that matters is _now._ And right now you make me happier than I ever could have imagined.”

“Really?” He seems doubtful, as if he doesn’t want to let himself believe it. 

“Really,” she insists. “We’ll deal with the future when it happens. Okay?”

“Okay.”

She smiles. “Now, do you want to kiss me again before I spontaneously combust right here in medical?”

He needs no further invitation. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her close, and captures her lips in a kiss that’s so passionate that her head spins and her toes curl and butterflies flutter in her stomach. 

She winds her arms around his neck as his mouth glides over hers, their tongues exploring and their hands caressing, and she thinks that this - _this -_ is her absolute favourite thing ever. 

  
  



	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter where the mature rating comes into effect, and it's borderline explicit. I'll see how it goes, but I may change the rating to explicit for future chapters.

They’re both exhausted after the stress of the day. Abby’s leg is throbbing and there’s no way she can put any weight on it, so he carries her back to his quarters, although this time she doesn’t mind because he kisses her all the way there, and if she gets a bit of a bump on her head because he’s not looking where he’s going and takes a corner too sharply, she’s not complaining. In his room he tucks her into bed, making sure her leg is comfortable, and then leaves her to rest while he goes in search of food after one last, lingering kiss that leaves her tingling with anticipation. 

She takes advantage to doze lazily. Her mind is still drowsy even if her body is alive with long forgotten sensations, sensations that she never really expected to feel again, especially not since she’d woken up from cryo and discovered she’d be spending the rest of her life alone with Marcus Kane. How wrong she’d been, she thinks in amusement. 

Even his name seems different now, she muses as she drifts off. In the past the emphasis was always on _Kane,_ short and harsh and stiff, fitting with his unbending personality and rigid adherence to the rules. Now he’s Marcus, mellow and soft, but with a gentle core of strength which is both reassuring and sexy. She loves it. She loves _him,_ she thinks to herself for the thousandth time, the concept dancing in her head like leaves in the breeze. She hopes he gets back soon, and not just because her tummy is rumbling for food. 

…………….

Meanwhile, Marcus hurries back to the airlock to collect the rucksack full of food he’d discarded there earlier, when his sole focus had been on fetching medical supplies to save Abby’s life. His stomach is still churning with fear at the memory, but then instantly calms when he thinks of her now safely in his bed, alive and well and waiting for him. 

Waiting for _him._

His stomach lurches, although it’s more of a somersault than a freefall drop off a cliff. So they are doing this, he thinks, this thing he’s sworn to himself he’ll never let happen but has wanted for longer than he cares to admit. He’s been so caught up in his worries about the future; of everything that could go wrong between them, and how they could continue to live together if it did; of what will happen when she goes back into cryo, and how he’ll live without her once she's gone. He’ll cross that bridge when they come to it, he thinks. The future is full of unknown bridges to be crossed, each one shakier than the next. The human race is clinging to survival, cheating the odds when inexplicable radiation waves and failing CO2 scrubbers are conspiring against them. In times when they shouldn’t even _have_ a future, the only thing that truly matters is now. And right now she’s here, and she wants this. 

He makes some soup, adding extra protein flakes for her because he knows she loves them and she deserves nice things today, although he wishes he could give her nicer things than just dehydrated food. Tomorrow he’ll look through the new food they’ve brought back and see what he can come up with, but for today this will have to suffice. He doesn’t want to be away from her any longer than necessary, so puts everything on a tray with some crackers and heads back to his quarters.

When he enters his bedroom she’s sleeping. The covers are pulled up to her chin, and her face is peaceful and regaining its colour; he’s glad, because it means she’s obviously not in too much pain. He places the tray on the shelf and sits down next to her. Her hair is coming out of its ponytail and is all over the pillow again. His weight on the bed rouses her, and she opens her eyes. 

“Hey,” she smiles from beneath sleepy lids. “Come here.” She wriggles her arms out from under the blankets and holds them out to him, wrapping them around his neck as he leans down to kiss her again. He’ll never get tired of kissing her, he thinks, but right now she’s probably hungry.

Apparently not. It seems she has no intention of breaking the kiss either. “Don’t you want to eat?” he asks between kisses. “I brought you soup.”

“Of course. I’m starving. Help me sit up.”

They eat sitting next to each other in bed, and he’s reminded of the first few days after she'd woken up, when he’d taken food to her room, and she’d refused to even talk to him. What a journey this has been, from “a whole new kind of hell,” to glares and bickering, to teasing and companionship, to falling so head over heels in love with her he can’t imagine life without her anymore. He glances at her and their eyes meet over their bowls, and the smile she gives him makes his heart melt. 

They finish their meal and he takes the bowls to the bathroom and rinses them out. When he comes out she’s stripped down to her tank top and loosened her hair, and he stops and stares at her, drinking her in with his eyes. This is the moment everything is going to change forever between them, irreversibly, for good or for bad. Kisses can be undone, forgotten, brushed off as insignificant in the grand scale of things, but the next step will close the door on their old relationship, and open another on an exciting but exhilarating new one. He has a moment of indecision, of uncertainty, but then her eyes darken with lust that he still can’t quite believe is for him, and he makes quick work of discarding his own pants before slipping into bed beside her and taking her in his arms. With a small growl his lips find hers and he kisses her till he’s breathless. 

She kisses him back hungrily, hands wandering up his chest and over his shoulders, around his neck to his hair, pulling him closer to devour him. His hand trails down her back to the tight curve of her waist, over her hip, then teases under the hem of her tank top, wanting to explore her further but hesitant as to how far she wants to go given the pain she’s in. 

She soon answers his unspoken question, by sliding her own hands underneath his T-shirt to trace the contours of his chest, fingers ghosting over his nipples, feathering the hairs, tiny moans vibrating from her throat as she claims him. He smiles into the kiss and gently slips his fingers under the soft fabric, savouring the silky smooth feel of her skin, until he reaches the curve of her breast, and as his thumb brushes over her nipple her whole body quivers, and she gasps and breaks the kiss.

“Ouch.”

It’s not quite the reaction he’d expected, and he’s slightly mortified. He thought he’d barely touched her but maybe he was rougher than he’d meant to be. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, no. It felt good. It’s just my leg, it kind of cramped.”

“When I touched you?”

“Yes. It sent shivers all over me but the muscles in my leg spasmed.”

He moves his hand back to a safer position on her waist. “I’m sorry. Maybe we should wait.”

“No, it’s okay,” she breathes. “Don’t stop.” Her eyes are shining with want, and his cock strains against the material of his boxers. Tentatively, he moves his hand back to her breast, cupping its round fullness in his palm but avoiding directly stimulating the nipple. He kneads gently, and her eyes close with pleasure.

“Is that okay?”

“It’s perfect,” she sighs. 

He slides her tank top up and over her head, freeing her breasts, and he gazes down at them in awe. He’s spent most of his life specifically avoiding looking at them, because whilst it’s one thing to find your fellow council member infuriatingly attractive even when she’s yelling at you, it’s another thing to ogle her breasts across the council table, and for all his faults, he’s not a pervert. And obviously, since she woke up, he’s done everything in his power to never make her feel uncomfortable in that way. She was alone on a space station with him and even if she didn’t like him, she at least had to be able to trust him, and feel safe with him.

He’s struggling a little to find the words to express how he’s feeling as he takes in the glorious sight before him, the perfect mounds of creamy flesh topped with dark pink nipples.

“Wow,” he says softly and she giggles adorably. 

“So eloquent,” she chides him. 

“Shut up,” he mumbles as he buries his face in the soft valley between them, kissing and nuzzling her until her sighs become breathy and she’s tugging at his hair.

“God I love your beard,” she moans.

Spurred on by her pleasure, he takes a nipple in his mouth, and he’s delighted when she squirms beneath him but doesn’t yell in pain. He drags his mouth across her skin to the other one and her sighs become almost pants. 

“Take your T-shirt off,” she says, tugging it upwards. “I want to see you too.” 

He obliges, wanting nothing more than to feel her body pressed directly against his skin, but as he settles back down her eyes widen in shock.

“Marcus! What the –?”

“What?” He’s immediately self-conscious; it’s the second time her reaction is unexpected but she’s seen him naked before, and he doesn’t remember her ever having a reaction like that. 

“What happened to your shoulder?"

“My shoulder?” He glances down and nearly does a double take; his right shoulder is black and blue, a huge bruise spreading slowly towards his collar bone. “Oh. That must have been when I was jetpacking through the Ark. I kept crashing into the walls.”

_“What?”_

“It was the quickest way to get back to you,” he explains. “But it was more difficult to control my trajectory inside the Ark, and I crashed a couple of times.”

A strange look comes over her face, like she has wind and is trying to keep it in. He knows her well enough by now to know what that means. He props himself up on one elbow, eyeing her with suspicion. 

“You think that’s funny, don’t you,” he says wryly. Her cheeks are turning pink and she’s biting her lip to keep a straight face. In the end she can’t hold it in anymore and she lets out a peel of laughter, burying her face in his chest as her body shakes with mirth. He can’t help laughing too, though. Her amusement is infectious, and it _does_ seem comical in hindsight.

“Oh God,” she giggles as they cling to each other. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time.”

“It really wasn’t,” he mumbles into her hair. “I was just worried sick about you.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Her tone is contrite. 

“It’s okay. I’d do the same thing a thousand times for you.”

Her expression softens, her eyes filling with love and gratitude, and he knows it’s not only because he saved her life, but because of everything they’ve been through, and the happiness they’ve found. He can read everything in her eyes. They’ve always been so expressive, and often it took everything in his power to hold her gaze when she was challenging him across the council table, shooting him furious glares of disdain or exasperation. Now he could lose himself in them forever. A lump forms in his throat and he swallows it down, but she’s more preoccupied with his physical state.

“Does it hurt? Your shoulder?”

“It does a little, now you mention it.” It’s aching slightly, but that’s only to be expected.

“Okay, I should check you over.”

“What, now?” 

“Yes.” She prods gently around the bruise and along to his collarbone, and he winces.

“You know, I preferred what we were doing before.”

She smirks at that, but continues her examination of him. “Does it hurt here?”

“No.”

“Okay, turn over.” 

He obliges, and her hands roam over his aching back and neck muscles. It’s bliss, and he feels himself becoming almost liquid beneath her touch, his skin rippling in pleasure as the tension flees from his body. “Hmmm,” he sighs. “That feels so good.” 

“There doesn’t seem to be any further injury,” she says, dropping a kiss onto his shoulder. “Did you bang your head?”

“Yes, but I had the helmet on, so my head is okay. Which is more than I can say for the helmet.”

“You might have a concussion anyway, just from your brain being shaken about inside your skull.”

“That’s – romantic,” he chuckles, turning over to face her again, but she’s serious.

“What’s your name?”

He rolls his eyes. “Marcus Kane.”

“How old are you?”

“Nearly forty-five, although at this moment I feel like a horny teenager.”

She giggles. “What year is it?” 

“It’s twenty-one fifty-four, and the world ended a hundred and two years ago.”

“How many fingers am I holding up?” She holds up three fingers of her left hand. He studies her for a moment, then takes her hand in his and kisses them one by one. 

“Three.”

“And now how many fingers do you see?” She holds up one, and he kisses it, this time a little more lingeringly, and she traces the outline of his lips with her finger tip.

“One.”

“What else do you see?” she asks breathlessly, and he knows the medical examination is over. 

He scans her face, wondering where to begin. “I see two beautiful brown eyes,” he says, placing kisses on her eyelids. “I see the cutest nose on the whole Ark.” He kisses her nose. “And I see the most delicious, kissable lips I’ve ever seen.” He moves his mouth onto hers in a chaste kiss, and she gives a little moan and tries to capture his lips, but he’s too quick for her, moving his lips along her jaw to kiss behind her ear.

“Marcus…”

“I see soft, golden skin,” he murmurs against her neck, and her breath hitches. “I see amazing hair that is so sexy when it’s loose.” He moves his hand gently up her side, over her rib cage to cup her breast again. “And I see gorgeous breasts that are driving me crazy right now.” He bends his head to place a kiss on the soft skin of each breast, then lifts his head to look at her. Her pupils are dilated with desire, her breathing shallow. She’s _breathtaking_ like this. “I see the most beautiful woman in the world, who I think I’ve been in love with for longer than I can remember.” 

“Marcus, please,” she whispers. “Make love to me.”

“I am making love to you,” he murmurs.

Her hand wanders down to his boxers, and his eyes flutter closed in pleasure as her hand closes around him. “I want you inside me.”

Her words send desire shooting through him, but – “I’m worried I’ll hurt you. How can you move your leg?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find a way.” 

He thinks for a moment. “Can you roll over slightly, so that I can move behind you? Don’t put all your weight on your bad leg though.” Gently, he pushes his boxers off and maneuvers them both so that she’s half on her side and he’s half under her, half behind her, and lifts her good leg over his, opening her up to him. “Is that comfortable?” 

“Yes, it’s fine.”

She’s still wearing her underwear so he slips them off her legs, taking care over the dressing, then takes her in his arms and trails his hand down her stomach to the soft triangle of hair between her thighs. He feels her shudder under his touch, and hopes her leg doesn’t spasm again. She tips her head back and he buries his mouth in her neck as his fingers slip between her folds.

She lets out a cry of pleasure and arches against him, and it’s so hot he nearly comes right then. She’s so wet and ready for him that he lifts her leg and angles himself at her entrance. “Are you sure?” he asks, checking one last time.

“God yes, please Marcus,” she sighs, and he pushes inside her.

She feels amazing, and he lets out a groan, but he’s mindful not to get lost in his own pleasure. He rocks his hips slightly, barely moving at first, trying to gauge by her sighs if he’s hurting her or not. When she pushes back against him, asking for more, he follows her lead and deepens his thrusts, and her cries of pleasure drive him wild. He clutches her tightly to him and they rock together, their sighs turning to pants, their skin growing sticky with sweat.

He can feel his climax building but he wants to wait for her so he slips a hand down to stroke her clit, and she bucks against his hand. Her eyes are closed and her lips are parted as earthy little moans escape her, and he thinks she’s getting close, but suddenly she gives a loud sigh of frustration and opens her eyes. 

He stills, and blinks down at her in confusion. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t come, Marcus. My leg spasms as soon as my muscles tense.”

“Oh.” _Fuck._ “It’s okay. We can stop.” He pulls out of her, somewhat reluctantly, but there’s no way he’s going to carry on if she’s not enjoying it. 

“No, don’t,” she says. “You’re so close. It’s still amazing even if I don’t come.”

He frowns. “No, Abby, I can’t… it doesn’t feel right.”

“Hey. It’s fine,” she says. “Really, I want you to.”

“No.” He’s adamant. 

“Marcus. It’s not all about coming, you know. I love to feel you inside me, and to see your pleasure. Now, shut up, and fuck me. Please.”

“Abby, I can’t now even if I wanted to.” His dick has gone as limp as a dishrag, his orgasm fading in a haze of awkwardness. 

She reaches behind her. “Come here.” Her expert hand begins stroking him, and he feels himself hardening again. She rolls onto her back and gazes up at him, and the desire in her eyes is mesmerising.

“I’ve imagined this, you know,” she whispers.

“You have?” He’s shocked to hear this. 

“Yes. When I was in my bed and you were in yours, and I couldn’t sleep at night.”

“Oh fuck, Abby.” The image she’s put in his head, together with her hand deftly stroking his cock, is taking him to a whole new level of ecstasy. “You really did that?” He presses his lips against her head, and stifles a moan as she picks up speed.

“Why do you think I went back to my own room sometimes?”

“Oh God.” He’s beginning to spiral towards his climax. “Abby, I’m –”

“Come inside me,” she whispers, guiding him inside her, and all it takes is a couple of thrusts and he’s emptying himself into her with a long, drawn out groan, her warm tightness sucking every last drop of his orgasm from him. For a moment he’s too stunned to speak, his head spinning and his heart hammering in his chest.

“Oh,” she sighs as he comes back down. “That was amazing.” 

He opens one eye. “It was?”

“Yes. You’re beautiful when you come.”

He huffs an embarrassed laugh. “I doubt that very much. But it was fantastic.” He pulls her to him and kisses her long and hard. “You’re fantastic. And when your leg is better, I’m going to give you so many orgasms you won’t be able to walk for a week.”

She laughs. “That kind of defeats the object of my leg getting better.”

“True.” He kisses her again. “I can’t wait, though. I want to make you happy too.”

“Marcus.” Her voice cracks a little. “You make me so happy already. Don’t you see that?”

He strokes her cheek with his thumb, suddenly overcome, and he wonders how he could have ever thought that this was a bad idea. Nothing has changed, it’s not even closing the door on their friendship. It’s just an extension of it, the logical progression of things. Nothing has ever felt more natural, or more right, than where he is now; in her arms, and with her in his. 

He pulls her closer, and covers her with the blanket. “You make me happy too,” he says, dropping a kiss on her head. “Now go to sleep, or that leg will never get better.”

She snuggles into him, and within minutes she’s asleep. 

  
  



	21. Chapter 21

She sleeps fitfully, the pain in her leg penetrating her sleep despite her exhaustion. When it finally rouses her completely it’s throbbing and she bites her lip to stop herself crying out as she shifts her weight slightly, trying to find a more comfortable position, although any position that’s not flat on her back is agony. As she does so she realises that she’s a bit sore in another place too, but that’s a different kind of soreness, the kind that makes her smile and bite her lip for a different reason.

He’s still asleep next to her, his arm thrown protectively across her abdomen, keeping her close but not too much, always sensitive to her comfort, even in his sleep. His face is peaceful and she’s loath to wake him up but she has no other choice.

“Marcus.” Her throat is dry and her head is aching. She needs to take some more of the anti-inflammatory painkillers she’d taken the evening before, but they hadn’t thought to bring them with them; they’d had more important things on their minds when they’d left medical. She wonders how she’d managed to have sex; she certainly couldn’t now. Her whole body feels like a dropship has landed on it. 

He stirs slightly, and as soon as he realises she needs him he’s awake, concern crossing his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I need some more of those painkillers,” she says roughly. “And some water.” 

“You need to eat something too, if you’re taking anti-inflammatories. Can you manage something?”

She smiles through her grogginess. She’s taught him well. “Yes. It doesn’t have to be a lot.”

She feels the bed dip and rise as he stands up, and she immediately mourns the loss of his warmth next to her. She wraps the blankets more tightly around her, and she must doze off because it seems like he’s back in no time at all, with the pills and dry crackers and water. She gulps some water, then manages a cracker although it’s like eating dust, and finally washes the pills down with some more water. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks when they’re snuggled under the blankets again. She can see from the earnest expression on his face that he’s not referring to her leg. 

“Happy,” she says, searching his face. “You?”

“Same. Of course.”

He’s a man of few words but his soft smile speaks thousands. She feels her eyes growing heavy again, and she’s just beginning to drift on the waves of sleep, when a memory comes to her, and her eyes snap open. “Marcus?”

“Mmm?”

“Is it me, or was I floating on Farm Station?”

He gives a deep sigh. “You were. Gravity is failing,” he says. “On that whole section of the Ark. I think it’s because of the damage in the repository.”

“What?? That’s not good!”

“It’s not. I’m trying not to think about it at the moment, to be honest.”

“Do you think we can fix it?”

He doesn’t answer, and she knows he doesn’t want to vocalise his pessimism. She doesn’t press him; they’ve got enough on their plates at the moment. It’s a worrying turn of events, though. Gravity has never failed, not once in the century since the Ark united. A feeling of impotence overwhelms her, and as usual her instinct is to act. 

“We should go and do some checks,” she says. “Find out if it’s failing on the other stations too.”

“I’ll go and check it out later.”

She ignores his use of the first person singular. “I wonder if it had something to do with us opening the doors. Because on the way down to Mecha, it was fine, right?”

“Possibly,” he says. “I can’t see how, though. Gravity has nothing to do with air pressure on the Ark, and anyway there was no pressure anywhere even before we opened the doors.”

“Ugh.” His logic is infallible, and she sinks into silence again. She doesn’t dare to think about what will happen if gravity fails on Alpha too. The Ark is not equipped to be a zero-G space station; it doesn’t have the technology earlier versions had in order to sustain life without gravity. As if it weren’t enough that oxygen was failing, now they risk having no gravity too. “I just feel so helpless. I want to get up and _do_ something. I can’t just lie here while the Ark is disintegrating around us.”

“Hey,” he says, running his fingers through her hair. “You need to concentrate on getting better.”

He’s right, and she does her best to quell the impatience bubbling inside her. His fingers tangling in her hair is wonderfully relaxing, though, and she feels her agitation dissipating. She stretches slightly and purrs. “Hmmm. I love that.” 

“I know you do,” he chuckles, and as she dozes off she can’t help marvelling at how well he knows her. 

…………..

  
  


The cramps in her leg worsen during the day, which doesn’t help her mood or her impatience. She asks Marcus to bring her muscle relaxants, which make her drowsy and sluggish but at least she gets a good night’s sleep the following night. The next morning she feels rested and the pain in her leg is bearable and cramp-free, even when she moves or tenses the muscles. 

She wriggles towards him a little and is delighted to encounter the heavy thickness of his erection against her hip. She sneaks her hand down between their bodies, on the pretext of scratching her thigh but really unable to resist rubbing the back of her hand against him. 

He tenses and stirs, tightening his grip around her. “Stop it,” he murmurs into her hair. 

“Stop what?”

“You know what.”

She smiles and removes the offending hand, bringing it to his cheek instead. She scrapes her nails gently through his beard, enjoying its rough prickliness beneath her hand, remembering how it had felt buried between her breasts. Desire pools inside her, and she cranes to kiss him. “My leg isn’t cramping anymore.”

“Oh.” He pulls her gently against him, his interest unmistakable. “That’s good news.”

“It’s very good news.” She trails her fingers suggestively down his chest and over the taut muscles of his stomach, until she reaches the downy hair below his navel. Her fingers tease at the elastic of his boxers but she doesn’t even have time to contemplate her next move because he seizes her and kisses her, hard and wild, their teeth clashing and tongues battling. So that’s how he wants it, she thinks, as her hands clutch at his head and hold him still, taking back control.

His hands push her tank top up roughly and she moans as his mouth falls to her breasts, the now familiar scrape of his beard contrasting with the wonderful softness of his mouth as he covers her body with hot wet kisses. When he takes her nipple between his teeth her breath catches in her throat as pleasure shoots through her. She’s trembling now, and she splays her hands on his back, trying to ground herself in the smoothness of his skin and the firmness of his muscles.

He raises his head to kiss her again, this time more softly, his eyes full of questions. He doesn’t need to voice them, she knows what he’s asking. She can see the conflict in his face; he wants her with every fibre of his being but he’s worried about hurting her, about taking advantage when she’s vulnerable. 

“It’s okay,” she says, and the questions disappear, replaced with relief, and lust. She hooks her good leg round his waist and pulls him on top of her. She can’t bend her left leg but she spreads it as wide as she can and he keeps his weight to his left, away from her injury. They both still have their underwear on but his cock is deliciously hard against her sex, and red hot pleasure shoots through her with every rock of his hips. She pulls him down to kiss him as her first orgasm tears through her, her hands gripping his hair as her body tenses and shudders. 

She closes her eyes as the waves leave her body, and when she opens them he’s gazing down at her, his expression amused but his eyes still dark with desire. She smiles up at him, her chest heaving as she tries to get her breath back. 

“At last!”

He leans close to her ear, his lips warm on her skin. “That’s just the first. Stay there.” And with that he’s gone from view, and she stares up at the ceiling, breathless with anticipation. He peels her panties down over her hips and she hears his sharp intake of breath before his mouth is on her, and for a few minutes she can only moan incoherently as his tongue laps hungrily at her. Her second climax is more violent, making her arch off the bed with a sharp cry, her pleasure only slightly muted by the stitches pulling painfully in her leg but leaving every part of her body tingling with electricity. 

“Oh God,” she breathes. “I don’t want you to ever stop doing that.”

He moves up the bed and chuckles. “I don’t want to ever stop doing that either.”

She cups his face, her heart melting a little at the faint look of pride in his eyes. “Now it’s your turn.” 

He pushes his boxers off and lowers himself onto her, _into_ her, and their eyes lock as he begins to move. He makes love to her gently, careful not to hurt her, but there’s a raw animal instinct beneath the surface that she finds intoxicating. She thought she knew Marcus Kane but she’d had _no idea_ he would be like this in bed; so infinitely tender, so perfectly attuned to her comfort, but at the same time knowing exactly how to take her apart, piece by piece, until she’s quivering and shaking and coming in his arms for the third time in a row, gasping against his shoulder, and her name tumbles from his lips as he follows her over the edge.

She wants to stay like that forever, with him softening inside her, his weight pressing her into the mattress and his lips against her temple. She can feel his heart beating fast just out of sync with her own as they lie there, their breathing ragged, a sticky sheen of sweat on their skin. He’s wary of hurting her though, so he rolls off her and gathers her to him.

“I think we’re even now,” he says, and she laughs at the satisfied grin on his face .

……………

  
  


Marcus drags himself away from her long enough to prepare them lunch; he’s found a recipe for a pasta dish which he thinks he should be able to whip together, making pasta from the flour and water and with a sauce made out of dried vegetable powder. He wants to make her something nice, and this will make a change from their usual soup and crackers. 

First, though, he stops by the cryosuite to check that everything is in order. He hadn’t checked at all yesterday, because he’d been too preoccupied with stitching up Abby’s leg and then taking care of her. Everything is fine, as far as he can see, and he goes to check specifically on Clarke, just so that he can tell Abby that her daughter is fine. 

He’s just about to leave when it happens. The temperature gauge on Clarke’s cryopod flicks up one degree, then back down again. For a moment he thinks he’s imagined it, but as he watches it does it again. _Fuck._

He’s never seen this before, in all the time he’s spent in the cryosuite. When the three pods malfunctioned, they just started thawing, the temperature rising steadily. At least, that’s what he assumes. He wasn’t there watching the pods prior to them malfunctioning, so actually there’s no way he can know if this happened or not. He glares at the pod for a moment, daring it to do it again, but the temperature gauge stays reassuringly constant. Maybe it was just a small glitch. He decides not to say anything to Abby just yet. There’s no point worrying her, and she’ll only want to get up and come to the cryosuite.

“Hey Clarke,” he says, as if she can hear him and follow what he’s saying. “You really, really don’t want to wake up yet. It’s way too soon, and you need to go to Earth, okay? So just stay where you are for another forty-five years at least.” He hesitates. “And I’d really like to spend some time alone with your mom, if you don’t mind.” He wonders what Clarke would think if she could hear him, what she’d think of their relationship. Will Abby tell her about him when they get to Earth? The thought makes his heart ache, and he realises he can no longer even contemplate the idea of putting her back into cryo. This wasn’t the plan, he thinks in frustration. She wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him. Now everything is complicated. 

_Focus on now,_ he tells himself. _Don’t think about the future._ Right now Clarke’s cryopod is stable, and the alarm is activated if it starts to thaw. Abby is asleep in his bed, and will need to eat when she wakes up, so he heads to the mess to try out his cooking skills. 

The pasta turns out better than he expected, and Abby’s delight as she eats it is worth the time he spent painstakingly cutting the pasta into long strips and the blister he got on his finger from the boiling water splashing onto him as he dropped the pasta into the water. 

“Hmmm,” she sighs as she hands him her bowl. “That’s probably the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten. Although I have a sneaking suspicion someone told you that the way to a woman’s heart is through her stomach, and you’re just trying to get me into bed.”

Her eyes are twinkling, and he grins at her. “You’re already in my bed.” 

She leans to kiss him. “True.” She throws back the covers, and stands up a little unsteadily. 

“Wait,” he says. “Where are you going?”

“To use the bathroom,” she informs him, and he relaxes a little. “And then I’m going to systems control.” He immediately tenses again, and reaches for her wrist, stopping her in her tracks. 

“Abby, you need to rest. You can’t even walk.”

She proves him wrong by hobbling shakily across the room towards the bathroom. As she closes the door behind her, she glances back at him with a raised eyebrow. “Who says?”

Marcus shakes his head in despair. _One day,_ she’d rested. He might have known she wasn’t going to be an easy patient, but there is no way her leg is going to heal if she insists on using it straight away. He remembers her first aid lesson on the subject vividly. She’d joked about being scary enough to terrify even the most obstinate people into following her orders on resting up when they didn’t want to. The damn woman doesn’t practice what she preaches, though, he thinks in frustration, and she can always hold it over him that she’s the doctor, and she knows best, when in fact she’s just plain stubborn. 

The bathroom door opens and she comes out. She’s so beautiful despite the dressing on her thigh, her hair cascading messily around her shoulders, her breasts firm and round beneath the tank top. He feels the usual stirring, and an idea flashes through his mind. Of course, there’s one _very_ good way of keeping her in bed. With a soft smirk, he props himself up on one elbow, and runs his eyes over her curves, making no attempt to hide his admiration for her.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he says. “Come here.” He holds out his free hand, and she limps to sit on the bed next to him. He snakes an arm around her waist, his hand splayed on her stomach, and pulls her down so that she’s lying next to him. He hovers over her, pleased to note her eyes clouding with lust. Easy work, he thinks with satisfaction. 

He bends his head to kiss her neck, planning on worshipping her body for the next couple of hours if it means she stays in a horizontal position. He runs light kisses over her skin to where her neck meets her shoulder, then opens his mouth and sucks gently. She squirms and moans, and he smiles to himself. She’s putty in his hands. 

His hand runs down her arm to her hand, massaging her knuckles with his thumb, then carries on down her good thigh. His mouth moves to her chest, his beard nuzzling at her skin, and goosebumps fly over his skin as her hands tangle in his hair, tugging gently. 

“Marcus,” she breathes. 

“Shhh,” he says, continuing his path down to her abdomen. 

“Marcus.” 

She’s more forceful this time, and he lifts his head. “Yes?”

She takes advantage to move her hands to his beard and bring him closer to kiss him softly. Her eyes light up with merriment. 

“Nice try, honey.” 

And with that she’s slipped out from under him and is pulling her clothes on before he’s even realised she’s on to him, and he flops onto the pillow in defeat. 

“You’re impossible,” he groans. 

“They say doctors make the worst patients,” she returns with a smirk. “Now come on. I want to see what’s going on with the gravity.”

  
  



	22. Chapter 22

Back before cryo, when their relationship was fraught with tension and most of their interactions were ripe with animosity, when daggers flew from their eyes and icy words were uttered through gritted teeth, Abby Griffin’s hot-headed nature had been a constant source of conflict for Marcus Kane. On the one hand, he harboured a begrudging admiration for her; she was diligent and passionate, brilliant at her job, unwavering in her humanity and optimism, persistently pushing them all to do better, to _be_ better. She made a formidable ally and an even more formidable adversary, but God dammit if he wasn’t _always_ on the receiving end of that willful determination. Her consistent disregard for the rules, and the way she dismantled him with her superior sense of righteousness when confronted, would leave him seething with rage and wishing frustratedly that just for _once_ she’d see where he was coming from, and that they didn’t have to come to blows about _everything._

He’s amused to note that even though she’s now very much on his side, that now she looks at him with hearts in her eyes instead of daggers, and he’s just given her three earth-shattering orgasms that left her weak and trembling and breathless, she’s still as obstinately indomitable as ever. And while it makes him love her even more, it also makes him fear for her health.

She manages to hobble out of his room and thirty yards down the corridor before she has to stop and catch her breath, leaning against the wall, doubled over in pain. He saunters up to her and casually takes her in his arms, holding her against him so that he’s supporting her weight completely. 

“Are you sure you’re up to this?” he murmurs into her hair, and he’s astounded to feel her nodding against his shoulder. 

“Yes. I may just need a little help getting there, but once I’m in systems control I can sit down and I’ll be fine.”

He shakes his head. She’s unstoppable. “Okay. Come on then.” He manoeuvres her so that she’s tucked under his right arm and she wraps her left arm around his waist, so that when they start walking he takes her weight instead of her injured leg. They’ve only taken a few steps when she stops. 

“What?”

“We’re going in the wrong direction,” she says. “This is the way we’ve just come.”

“Oops. Silly me. So we are.”

She glares at him. “You did that on purpose.”

“I would never,” he retorts, a smile playing on his lips as he turns them around so they’re heading in the right direction, towards the Go-Sci ring. They make their way down the corridor but it’s slow work; even with his help she needs to stop every couple of minutes, and by the time they get to systems control her face is ashen with pain. 

He sits down in a chair and pulls her onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her, figuring that his body is probably more comfortable than the small hard chair. Her breathing is shallow and she’s sweating slightly from exhaustion. He brushes a few damp strands of hair out of her face, and lets her recover her breath. After a few minutes she’s calmer, and she lifts her head to him. 

“You know, maybe it is too soon to be up and about,” she admits. 

He gives a little chuckle. “You think?”

“You don’t have to be so smug. Just because you’ve done a few first aid lessons, you think you’re a doctor.” The tenderness in her eyes belies her indignant tone, though, and his cutting retort dies on his lips. 

“Well, I had the best teacher…” he says. “She’s an amazing doctor.”

Her face breaks into a smile. “Really?”

“Really. She just needs to learn to follow her own damn advice.”

She bumps her nose against his and then kisses him, tenderly at first and then more and more passionately, and it’s no good, he can’t stay mad at her when she’s kissing him like that. Summoning all of his willpower, he breaks the kiss and slaps her lightly on the ass.

“If you wanted to do this stuff, you should have stayed in bed. But since we’re here, we have work to do.”

She laughs. “Touché. Where do we start?”

……………

He has to hand it to her. She might be in pain, but her head is as lucid as ever, and they work hard for a couple of hours, analysing data from the last twelve months, trying to determine when the satellite had breached Farm Station, and when gravity had started to fail. The gravity on those three sections is generated by the rotation of Tesla station, the smaller of the Ark’s two ring stations; the bigger of course is the Go-Sci ring, where they are now, and which provides gravity for the rest of Alpha, Hydra, Arrow and Orchid.

From systems control they are able to reroute power to the external cameras and sensors and together they pore over the screen, searching for other signs of damage from space debris first on Farm and then on Factory, since those are the two stations where they are sure gravity is failing. The sheer enormity of the Ark means that it takes several hours, flicking from one camera to another, and then correlating the data from the sensors. 

They’ve barely covered half of Factory when Abby rubs her hands over her face and sits back in her chair, and Marcus can see at once that she’s beginning to flag. 

“Time for a break?” he asks, and she nods. 

“Time to call it a day, I think.”

“Okay.” 

Her eyes are glassy with tiredness, her cheeks slightly flushed, and he frowns, alarm bells ringing in his head. He reaches out and presses his hand to her forehead. As he suspected, she’s burning up.

“Abby, you have a fever,” he says.

“I know.” 

He gives a little exasperated shake of his head and stands up, pulling her to her feet. “Come on, let’s get you to medical.” 

………….

Abby sits on the bed in medical, her body shaking slightly with shivers of cold even though the temperature on the Ark is always constant, and watches Marcus as he looks for and locates a thermometer. She can’t help smiling to herself at how well he finds his way around medical now. He sticks the thermometer under her tongue and then sets about changing the dressing on her leg. Sure enough the wound is slightly inflamed. She’d felt the fever coming on as they pored over the screens of data, but she was hoping against hope it was just tiredness making her feel achy and groggy, and not an infection.

“I’m going to need antibiotics,” she says glumly around the thermometer. Antibiotics usually gave her a bad tummy for a few days. 

“Hmmn.” He strokes his beard thoughtfully, but there’s a twinkle in his eye, and she knows what’s coming. “That may be a problem. We only have twenty-seven boxes.” He takes the thermometer out of her mouth and she smiles weakly, remembering his dumb report, but she’s feeling too sick to roast him about it. 

“A hundred and three point five. You’re practically on fire.”

He fetches the antibiotics and an antipyretic to bring her temperature down, and she swallows them with a mouthful of water, then lies down on the narrow bed. 

“I could sleep for a year,” she murmurs, and she feels him pulling a light sheet over her, then the scraping of a chair as he sits down next to her. 

“Sleep,” he says. “You’ll feel better for it.” She feels his lips, cool and soft, against her forehead, and then his hand caressing her hair, and although the shivers are beginning to subside, her head is pounding and sleep doesn’t come.

“Talk to me,” she says. “I want to hear your voice, so I have something to concentrate on apart from the pain.”

“What do you want me to talk about?”

“Anything. Tell me about Earth.”

“Well, I’ve never been there,” he chuckles, his fingers still massaging her scalp. “But from what I’ve seen in documentaries it was so beautiful.”

“Imagine you’re there now,” she says. “What do you see?”

He’s silent for a moment. “I’m by a beautiful lake,” he begins. “The water is so blue and it’s sparkling in the sun, like a crystal. All around are forests of tall pointy trees.” She smiles at his description, and she can almost feel his frown of concentration. “I don’t remember the name, but there used to be trees that didn’t have leaves, but they were all spiky and pointy. Maples, maybe.”

She’s pretty sure maples had leaves, because she’s seen the flag of Canada on Hydro station, but she’s too tired to focus on details. “Go on.” 

“The sky is blue and there are fluffy grey clouds. There are mountains, too, craggy peaks covered with snow. It’s the most beautiful place in the world,” he says. “There are no sounds except for the waves lapping at the shore, and some crows tweeting in the trees.”

His description is so vivid, and his voice so soothing, that she almost feels like she’s there, standing by the lake next to him, feeling the sun on her face and the breeze in her hair. She’s never felt the sun on her face, but she imagines it must be so warm, and so bright, and she can feel her skin absorbing the energy, can feel it coursing through her veins and calming her tremors.

“The only thing more beautiful then the lake and the mountains,” he says softly. “Is the woman standing next to me. She has hope in her eyes, and love in her heart and she’s so, so happy to be there. Her smile is brighter than the sun, more beautiful than the scenery. More radiant than life itself.”

His hand has moved from her hair to caress her face, and she reaches to take it in hers. His words have brought a lump to her throat, and a single tear of happiness slides down her cheek as she presses her lips to his knuckles. “I love you,” she whispers.

“I love you too.”

“Carry on,” she breathes without opening her eyes. “Please.”

“We’re walking through the forest,” he says, his voice impossibly soft and low. “The sun filters through the trees, and it’s crunchy underfoot. In the distance there’s a small house, like a cabin. It’s just for us.” His thumb is still stroking her cheek, and she feels like she’s floating away.

“This is where we’re going to live out the rest of our days,” he says. “We’ll grow vegetables and catch fish and spend the evenings talking under the stars.”

Tears are flowing down her cheeks now, tears of happiness tinged with sadness for this life they can only dream about, but in some way crying has released the tension in her head and she finally feels herself giving in to sleep. 

She’s standing in the forest, in front of the cabin, holding Marcus’s hand. She looks up at him, and it strikes her how handsome he is. The sun is in his hair and his eyes are soft and twinkling. 

“Come on,” she says, full of anticipation. “Let’s go in.” She doesn’t know if he’s heard her, but she sets off towards the door, which is already slightly open. She pushes it open further and goes inside. The cabin is simple but cosy, with wooden floors and beamed ceilings, and a comfy sofa in front of a roaring fire. It’s perfect. She turns to Marcus, smiling happily, but he’s no longer there. No one is there.

Something changes, and panic grips her. Where is he? She doesn’t want to be here alone. She looks around the room desperately. There’s someone on the sofa now, but it’s not him. The person has blonde hair, long and slightly curly, and her heart skips as she recognises the golden locks of her daughter. 

“Clarke?”

She can feel the heat from the fire, it’s so hot. Too hot. She feels sweat beginning to bead on her forehead and trickle down her temple. She approaches the sofa but the fire is creating a wall of impenetrable heat. Sweat is streaming down her back now, and she can’t breathe. It’s stifling. She presses on anyway; she needs to get to Clarke, to see if she’s okay.

Clarke is asleep, and she wonders how she can sleep so peacefully so close to this infernal heat. Her skin is pale, her eyelids almost translucent. Abby shakes her shoulder gently. “Clarke, wake up. It’s me.”

Clarke stirs, and opens eyes of steely blue. She opens her mouth to speak, and a rush of cold air hits Abby in the face. “Mom.” Her voice is barely more than a breath.

“Clarke!” She touches her daughter’s face, tears of joy welling in her eyes, but she flinches and snatches her hand away as if Clarke has burned her, but she’s not hot, she’s cold. Icy cold.

“Mom. I’m so cold. So. Cold.” Her eyes flutter closed again, and Abby lets out a cry of disbelief. How can she be so cold? The fire is raging, like the doors of hell have been opened. She pulls her daughter into her arms, trying to warm her up with the heat consuming her body, but Clarke stays deathly cold. 

“Clarke,” she sobs. “Marcus! Please. Help me! _Marcus!”_

Hot tears pour down her even hotter cheeks, immediately freezing into tiny drops of ice when they hit her daughter’s frigid skin. Ice is forming on Clarke’s eyelashes, and her breath is glacial. As she clutches her daughter and cries, the room begins to swim and morph around her, and suddenly she’s back in medical on the Ark, and she lays Clarke on the bed. Marcus is sitting on the chair, a data pad in his hand, brow creased as he studies the contents of the screen. Relief floods through her.

“Marcus!” she cries, but he doesn’t hear her. _“Marcus!!_ Help me!” He remains immobile, completely oblivious to her. She tries again. “Marcus, please!! I need you! I _need_ you...” Her voice peters off into a sob. What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he hear her? She turns back to Clarke, who is staring up at her with eyes which are turning opaque with cold.

“It’s too late, mom,” she says, her last breaths coming out in a fog of icy air. “It’s too late.”

“NOOOOOO!!” Abby screams. She sinks to the floor, shaking with sobs, her sweat-drenched body shivering with cold now the fire is gone. “Noooooooooooo!”

Suddenly two strong hands are seizing her under the arms and hauling her to her feet, and she collapses against his broad chest, her breath coming in heaving sobs. 

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

He wraps his arms around her and she clings to him, the image of Clarke’s frozen body etched in her mind.

“Abby, you’re soaked. What happened? I just went to the bathroom for a minute. You were sleeping.”

She opens her eyes, peaking at the bed where Clarke’s body is, but the bed is empty. “Clarke…” she says. “She was here, and she was freezing to death.”

“Clarke’s in cryo, Abby. It was a dream.”

The cabin in the forest flashes into her head, and she breathes more deeply. Of course it was a dream. She’s never been to Earth, and neither has Clarke.

“Oh God,” she mumbles. “It was so vivid. There was a fire in the cabin, and it was so hot…”

He sits her on the bed. “That was the fever. You’re drenched in sweat. We need to get you out of these clothes.”

She nods, and lifts her arms up for him to peel off her T-shirt and vest top, and she wriggles out of her pants. There are no clean clothes in medical, so he wraps her in the blankets. Now that her fever has broken and she’s dry, she’s beginning to feel better, physically, but she’s still in the throes of panic about her daughter. 

“Marcus. Can you go check on Clarke? I’m worried.” 

“Clarke’s fine,” he reassures her. “The alarm would have gone off if her pod started thawing.”

He’s right, she knows he is, but she’d rather be sure. “Please,” she pleads, and he must see something in her eyes, because he nods

“Okay. I’ll go. Will you be okay here a moment?”

“Yes. Thank you. Hurry, please.” She pushes him gently away, and with a last kiss he heads out of the door, and she lays down and rests her still aching head, praying that everything is okay with Clarke’s cryopod. 

……………

Marcus makes his way along the corridor to the cryosuite, more anxious than he’d care to admit, although it’s the older of the two Griffin women he’s worried about. Abby’s insistence on getting up today has led to a fever, and the fever has led to nightmares which meant she ended up on the floor of medical. He’ll need to check her stitches again when he goes back to her, because judging by the way she was slumped on the floor, she could very well have popped them all open. He shakes his head in frustration. He’d been joking when he said he was acting Chancellor but he may have to pull rank on her.

She won’t like that, that’s for sure, he thinks to himself grimly.

When he gets to the cryosuite he finds Clarke’s cryopod pulling the same stunt it had yesterday; flicking up one degree, and then back down. It does it a couple of times, and he gives the console a whack in frustration, but unfortunately that only makes it do it more quickly. Shit. He finds a screwdriver on the floor near his dismantled pod and takes off the side panel of Clarke’s pod, to see if there is a problem with the same circuit board which had burnt out in his and Abby’s pods.

The circuit board seems fine, but his attention is caught by a spark just below it. He pulls back, angling himself so that he can watch the spark and the temperature gauge at the same time, and sure enough, the two coincide. Every time there is a spark, the temperature goes up. 

He grabs a flashlight and peers inside. The cause of the spark is a sensor, which seems to be shorting out periodically. 

He sits back on his heels, and contemplates his options.

………….

Abby is going out of her mind in medical. The memory of the nightmare is still fresh in her mind, and she’s convinced herself Clarke is freezing to death in her cryopod. She wants to pace up and down but of course she can’t; hobbling doesn’t have the same effect and anyway, her leg hurts. Her fever has passed, though, and her headache is waning so she lies in the bed and stares at the ceiling, tears never far from her eyes, her hands twisting the sheet into knots. 

When Marcus comes back she can see immediately that everything is okay. His face is relaxed, and he’s smiling. He wouldn’t look like that if her daughter was dead, so she breathes more easily. She pushes herself into a sitting position.

“Well?” 

“Everything’s fine.”

“There was no problem?”

“A sensor was shorting out,” he says. “But I fixed it. Clarke’s fast asleep, and her pod is stable.”

“Thank God,” she breathes, flopping back onto the pillow. The relief is overwhelming, and she feels almost euphoric.

“Let me check your stitches _again,”_ he says. “I’m worried you may have popped them when you fell on the floor.”

“They’re fine,” she reassures him. “If the wound had opened there would be blood everywhere.”

“Nevertheless, I’d prefer to check, if you don’t mind.”

She acquiesces, touched by his thoughtfulness. He’s like a mother hen with her, she thinks in amusement. The stitches are fine, of course; she knew they would be.

“Tomorrow you are staying in bed,” he says firmly as he reapplies the dressing. “If I have to tie you to the bed to keep you there.”

She can’t help a tiny smirk crossing her face at that, and he catches her eye and shakes his head, guessing immediately what’s on her mind.

“You’re unbelievable,” he smiles.

“And you’re hot when you’re authoritative.” She snakes her arms around his neck and pulls him down to kiss him. 

“Well, I am the acting Chancellor after all. So I’m ordering you to bed, and you have to stay there.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, and his eyes darken, and she feels the usual butterflies in her tummy when he looks at her that way. 

“Say that again,” he growls.

“Yes _sir,”_ she says, her voice low and seductive, and she presses a tiny kiss to the corner of his mouth. 

“Fuck, it’s hot when you say that,” he groans, and his mouth crashes onto hers, and she surrenders willingly, pulling him closer to deepen the kiss. The kiss gradually calms, until they pull apart slowly, and she rests her forehead against his, her eyes closing with fatigue. 

“You know, as fun as that would be, I think I need to sleep,” she says wistfully.

He gives a little chuckle, and lifts her off the bed, placing her gently on her feet. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

  
  
  
  
  
  



	23. Chapter 23

“Maples had leaves, by the way,” she says lazily as they lie in bed the next morning, her head on his chest and her injured leg draped over his. “They weren’t the pointy ones.” 

“Are you sure?” His hand pauses where he’s stroking her back, and she wriggles a little to signal to him to continue. His warm, slightly calloused hands on her back are sending blissful shivers all over her body.

“Of course. It’s the leaf on the Canadian flag on Hydro station.”

“Oh, you’re right.”

“I know I am. The pointy ones were pines, or larches. The difference is that larches lost their needles in winter but pines didn’t.” She’s pleased with the information she’s managed to retrieve from the Earth science lessons she’d done as a teenager on the Ark.

“Since when have you been an expert on trees?”

She lifts her head to look him in the eyes. “I’m an expert on a lot of things, Marcus,” she says, her tone light but smug. “You ought to know that by now.”

“And incredibly humble about it too,” he says, his fingers moving to her ribs to tickle her and make her giggle. 

“Marcus! My leg!” His tickling is making her squirm, and the stitches are pulling in her leg.

He stills his fingers. “Oh, _now_ your leg hurts,” he teases her. “It was fine yesterday when you wanted to go tearing around the Ark like a maniac.” 

“It wasn’t fine,” she says. “And you know it.”

“Are you admitting I was right?”

She’s silent, biting her lip, and before she can think of a suitably cutting reply he gently rolls them over so that he’s now half on top of her. She smirks up at him, suddenly slightly breathless. His eyes roam her face, impossibly dark and with a myriad of emotions in them; from triumph to amusement to the ever-present love she’s gotten all too used to seeing. She wonders how she ever could have thought those eyes were cold and unfeeling, when now she can see the very depths of his soul in them.

“You were right,” she sighs, the teasing forgotten as she studies this face she loves so much. She trails her finger down his nose, that beautiful nose that always made him seem so haughty, so superior, and which now she just finds incredibly sexy. Her fingers scratch through his beard and she draws him closer, closing her eyes as his mouth finds hers in a wonderfully warm and soft kiss that sends gentle waves of pleasure through her. 

“So,” he says. “I guess this means I don’t have to tie you to the bed?”

“Hmmm,” she says thoughtfully. “Well, I think I should just go and check on Clarke in cryo.”

Her tummy flips as his eyes darken dangerously. “No,” he says firmly. 

“I’ll be fine,” she insists, beginning a half-hearted attempt to wriggle out from underneath him, but he immediately blocks her with his arm, and there’s no way she can move. She licks her lips tentatively, knowing what’s coming. “Let me go,” she says quietly. She can feel he’s hard against her thigh, and there’s a fire in his eyes now which matches the fire in her groin. 

“I said no, Abby.”

She has a sudden vision of him before cryo, clean shaven and disapproving, glowering at her as he rebukes her for some minor misdemeanour she’s committed. “Try and stop me,” she says. _“Kane.”_

The use of his surname tips him over the edge. He kisses her roughly, attacking her mouth with his tongue, and then just as abruptly he breaks away and stands up. She watches as he crosses the room and opens a drawer, and when he turns around he has a pair of handcuffs in each hand, and her pulse quickens. He’s really going to do this. 

Unfortunately, furniture on the Ark is minimal and sparse. Beds are just thin mattresses on simple frames, nightstands just shelves fixed to the wall. There are no headboards, no bars, no table legs. She can see the indecision in his eyes as he surveys the scene, trying to work out exactly what to tie her to, and she smiles knowingly. He’s never done this before. 

“There are loops on the mattress,” she explains. “To make it easier to lift them.” 

He makes quick work of handcuffing her to the loops, and then he lowers himself onto the bed, hovering above her. “I’d never have thought,” he murmurs, “that the indomitable Dr Griffin actually likes being tied up.”

“Oh, I like doing the tying up too,” she breathes.

“I bet you do.” He buries his face in her neck and kisses her until she’s liquid, his mouth leaving a warm trail down her chest and stomach until his tongue finds her core, and she nearly passes out with pleasure. The fact that her hands are tied means that she can’t guide him where she wants him, with the result that sometimes he’s just tantalisingly off centre, or he moves lower towards her entrance when she wants him higher, on her clit. After the months of satisfying herself, giving herself exactly what she wants when and where she needs it, it’s excruciating.

“Marcus,” she gasps. “Oh God… yes… there… no… higher… oh _God.”_ She doesn’t know whether he’s trying to follow her instructions or deliberately teasing her but she doesn’t care because he keeps her teetering on the brink for what seems like an eternity, so close but so far from the release she craves, and when, by coincidence or calculation, his tongue finally hits the right spot at the right time she tumbles over the edge into an orgasm so fierce she thinks maybe her heart actually stops beating. 

“Oh God,” she pants when she gets her breath back enough to speak. “Oh God. Are you trying to kill me?”

She hears him chuckle and feels the bed shift as he moves back up the bed and takes her in his arms, holding her to him as best he can given that her arms are spread eagled. He showers her with kisses, on her cheeks and forehead and nose and chin, and she lies with her eyes closed, chest heaving as the last ripples of pleasure leave her body. When she opens her eyes he’s gazing down at her with such reverence that she goes from post-orgasmic and breathless to soft and gooey in zero point five seconds. 

“Untie me,” she says. “I want to touch you.”

“Okay. I need to get the keys.” He lifts himself off her and pads across the room to the drawer he’d got the handcuffs out of, and she watches impatiently while he rummages around. When the rummaging doesn’t stop, she starts to get nervous. Her wrists are beginning to hurt. 

“Please don’t tell me you can’t find the keys.”

“I can’t find the keys.”

“You’re kidding.” 

He turns horrified eyes to her. “I’m not. They’re not here.” 

“You seriously handcuffed me to the bed before checking you could unhandcuff me again?” 

“Well, in my defence I haven’t used them for a while. I haven’t really had much use for handcuffs since everyone has been in cryo.”

“Marcus, I swear to God –“ She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so she goes with the former, and her body begins to shake with laughter at the predicament she’s in. “Look at us! It’s lucky everyone else is in cryo because this would be so embarrassing!”

He’s laughing too now, although he’s opening and closing drawers and closets desperately, chucking stuff out onto the floor as he searches for the wretched keys. Another bout of giggles wracks her body and tears are starting to slide down her cheeks, and she can’t even wipe them away because her hands are tied. 

“Can you imagine if word got out that Councillor Kane had handcuffed Dr Griffin to his bed and lost the keys?” she says between giggles. “There would be a scandal. We’d never live it down.”

 _“You_ would never live it down. I’d actually be quite proud of my achievement.” 

“Jerk,” she throws at him with a roll of her eyes, but there’s a fondness in her tone and the thought makes her chuckle. She wonders if he’d ever thought about handcuffing her to his bed, back when her life mission had been to annoy him as much as possible. 

The keys are nowhere to be found, so he takes a knife from his drawer and cuts through the loops of material that she’s handcuffed to, so that she’s free to move her arms but she still has the handcuffs on her wrists. She flexes her wrists a little to bring the feeling back, and reaches to pull him on top of her, but the handcuffs hit both of them in the face and they both give yelps of pain. 

“Ow!”

“Abby!”

They dissolve into laughter again, his deep belly laugh heightening her own near-hysterical giggles, and for a moment all she can do is cling to him and shake.

“Oh my God,” she gasps. “I can’t breathe.”

“I’m so glad my attempts to take control in the bedroom amuse you,” he laughs, but his face is radiating happiness like she’s never seen before. He wraps her in his arms and smothers her laughter with his mouth on hers and she melts into him, her giggles soon forgotten. She keeps her hands still, so as not to wreak havoc with the handcuffs, but the way his hand caresses her face and hair as he kisses her makes her feel like she’s the most precious thing in the world. 

Their kisses are soft and unhurried, gentle caresses of lips and tongues interspersed with whispered I love you’s and sighs of happiness. When she pulls him on top of her so that he can slip inside her, their bodies fit together so perfectly that it doesn’t even feel like an act between two people but rather that they become one, a single entity whose sole existence culminates in an explosion of pleasure so powerful that afterwards they immediately crash out, still tangled in each other, reluctant to pull apart even in sleep.

  
  


...............

  
  


When he wakes up there is a handcuff digging painfully into his ribs, so he extricates himself from her arms and gets out of bed. She’s still in a deep sleep, probably caused by the muscle relaxants she’s still taking, so he has a shower and then heads towards the guards’ locker room, hoping the missing keys will be in his locker. He locates them in the pocket of his uniform jacket, which he hasn’t worn since before cryo. 

Seeing his jacket hanging there he’s reminded of the pile of clothes he’d brought back from Factory station and which he hasn’t given to Abby yet. That’ll cheer her up a bit, he thinks. He’ll stop by the airlock to pick them up, before he’s makes them some lunch. Sex with Abby certainly gives him an appetite.

This thought passing through his head here in the once familiar surroundings of the locker room makes him pause. _Sex with Abby._ Pre-cryo it had always been discussions with Abby, or problems with Abby. Maybe inoculations with Abby, or at best a meeting with Abby. The phrase _sex with Abby_ had never entered his head. Well, that’s not strictly true, because he had always found her beautiful, but it was more of an abstract concept, a vague meandering of his mind which he never elaborated into a coherent sentence. 

After stopping by the airlock to collect the clothes he goes to check on the cryosuite, and is pleased to find that Clarke’s cryopod is still functioning perfectly. He stays for twenty minutes, staring at the temperature gauge, but it doesn’t flicker once, and he heads to the mess feeling extremely pleased with his handiwork and wondering idly if he actually should have become an engineer instead of a guard. 

Abby’s awake when he gets back to their room, and growing increasingly grumpy at the handcuffs still on her wrists. He hastens to free her and then takes her wrists and massages them with his fingers. There are red marks all around them, although he suspects that might have been caused by how much she strained against them when she came rather than having had them on for a couple of hours. He lifts each one to his mouth and presses kisses along the marks. 

“Is that better?” he murmurs, and she gives him a warm smile. 

“A bit. Thank you.” She leans to kiss him on the cheek. “Let’s keep the keys somewhere safe for next time.”

“I want to make them softer, though,” he says with a frown. “I don’t want you to hurt your wrists every time.”

Her eyes light up at the idea of another time. “Next time it’s your turn,” she smirks and he swallows. He’s never done anything like that before. He’s always been the one to take the lead in bed, although his sexual encounters in the past were always perfunctory rather than adventurous. He’s not sure he wants to be tied up, to relinquish control, but he’ll try anything for her. 

After they’ve eaten - just soup again today but with added soya beans - he gives her the bag. “Here,” he says. “I forgot to give you these.”

Her face lights up as she opens the bag. “When did you get these?” she asks in wonder. “Did you go back to Factory?”

“I picked them up on the way back to get your medical bag. I wanted you to have them.”

Her smile widens as she rummages through the clothes. “Thank you. I’ll look through them later. We can take a couple of things each, but we should leave the rest for the others when they get out of cryo.”

“Take what you want, Abby. It’s fine. There were more things on Factory.”

She looks at him wide-eyed. “Well well well. Is Councillor Kane advising me to break the rules? What happened to “no special treatment”?”

He flushes a little. “I just want you to have nice things.” Anything to brighten her monotonous existence with him on the Ark.

“I have nice things. I have you.”

He’s so touched by that that he doesn’t know what to say, so he settles for a quick kiss and a “thank you,” even though that doesn’t even scratch the surface of what he’s feeling. It doesn’t matter, though, because she gets it. 

They spend the rest of the afternoon playing chess. Abby has gotten really good - she says it’s because he’s a good teacher, but really it’s all thanks to her own quick and reactive mind; that, and the fact that she’s competitive as hell and wants to beat him at any cost. He enjoys it, because it keeps the rivalry which has always been a central part of their relationship alive. This afternoon she’s in particularly good form, and his concentration isn’t helped by the fact that this is the first time they’ve played since they’ve been a couple, and Abby is wearing considerably fewer clothes than the other times they’ve played. 

“Marcus, honey,” she frowns as she takes the third of his pieces in a row. “Are you feeling okay? How could you not notice my bishop?”

He fixes her with his most penetrating stare but she simply flicks her hair over her shoulder and smiles at him expectantly, and he wills himself to concentrate on the game and not her long bare legs, one of which is tucked under her chin while she runs her hand absent-mindedly up and down the smooth skin of her shin. 

The harsh nature of life on the Ark required a high degree of self-discipline and adherence to rigid rules, and as head of the guard and member of the council he could probably claim to have achieved a higher level of self-discipline than most, but today that self control is being tested to the limit. He sucks on his lip as he tries to think tactics, and moves his bishop pawn to take her queen pawn. It’s a small conquest, but it’s all he can manage right now, but then he kicks himself when he realises that move has left his king exposed. 

She merely raises an eyebrow as she slides her queen into place. “Check.” Her smile is something between smug and confused, which means she’s completely unaware of the effect she’s having on him. With a sigh of relief he realises he can eliminate her queen with a foul swoop of his rook, and he feels back in control again as her face falls in disappointment. The feeling of control is short-lived though, as she wraps her arms around herself, making her breasts strain at her tank top and sending blood rushing to his groin. Goddamn her. She’s all the more alluring for the fact that she has no idea how effortlessly beautiful she is.

She wins two games in a row, but when she suggests a third he sits back in his chair and shakes his head, exhausted from the effort of concentrating. 

“No. I think I’ve had enough for today.” 

She looks surprised, which is understandable. They usually play three games, and it’s usually her who loses interest first.

“I can’t play properly with you looking like that,” he complains. 

Her eyes crease in confusion. “Like what?”

He gestures vaguely in her direction. “Like that. All hair and breasts and legs. It’s way too distracting.”

She smirks in satisfaction, and in that moment he understands that _he’s_ the oblivious one, and she’s been playing him all along. 

“You’re evil,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.

“I prefer the word _resourceful_ ,” she smiles, and something in him snaps. With a swift swipe of his hand he knocks the chess board onto the floor and lunges for her, pushing her onto her back and glowering down at her. 

“I call it cheating,” he growls, but she just wraps her arms around him and pulls him in for a long sweet kiss and it’s no good, he’s lost to her again. 

Damn the woman.   
  
  
  
  
  
  



	24. Chapter 24

Abby sits on the soft mat in the gym, her legs straight out in front of her, and surveys the shiny red scar on her thigh. It’s actually very tidy; Marcus had done an amazing job of stitching her up and it has healed nicely, mainly thanks to him making her rest up. He’s been wonderful, keeping her company and bringing her food and generally making sure all her needs were taken care of while her leg got better. 

_ All  _ her needs, she thinks with a smile. 

It’s been three and a half weeks since the accident, and two weeks since she took the stitches out, and whilst she’s relatively pain free she’s still suffering from regular bursts of searing pain that leave her doubled up and gasping. This pain, together with bouts of numbness and tingling in her calf and foot, are classic symptoms of peripheral neuropathy, or more specifically in her case femoral nerve damage. They started the physiotherapy sessions a week ago, because the damage to the muscle has also left her with a limp, which together with the nerve pain is making her irritable and snappy.

“Okay,” says Marcus, kneeling on the floor next to her. “Lie down.” 

She obliges, and he places his warm hands under her thigh and lifts it about ten inches off the ground. “Right. I’m going to let go and I want you to keep your leg up like that for ten seconds.”

She nods and grits her teeth, and he gently reduces his hold on her leg until he’s not touching her and she’s supporting her leg herself. 

“One… two... three…”

A stabbing pain shoots up her leg, taking her breath away and making nausea swirl in her stomach. “Ow! I can’t.” She lowers her leg to the ground, and his hand immediately catches her to support her again.

“It’s okay. Was it the shooting pain?”

“No, just a slight itch,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Of course it was.”

He throws her a slightly disapproving look, and she can see he’s biting his tongue, but he just holds her hand while his other hand massages her aching muscles, and she closes her eyes at the relief.

“Your hands are magic.”

“Is that better?”

“Not really.” She scowls. “Now I have pins and needles in my foot.”

He chuckles and shifts his position so that he’s holding her foot in his lap, and begins gently massaging the sole with his thumbs. She lies back, staring at the ceiling, trying to blink back the tears of frustration. She doesn’t want to be grumpy with him but she’s never been a good patient; she’s too used to being on the other side of the doctor-patient relationship. Luckily Marcus has an endless patience and he knows her well enough to understand how difficult it is for her to be the helpless one for once. 

“Okay, let’s try again,” she says when his thumbs on her feet are beginning to feel like razor blades. 

This time she manages the ten seconds – the searing pain is sporadic and isn’t related to actually using her leg, so she can hold her leg up with only a dull ache spreading up her thigh to her groin, but the effort takes it out of her and she collapses back with a groan. 

“Again,” he says, and she takes a deep breath and lifts her leg again. Her muscles tremble with the effort and she can feel sweat breaking out on her brow. “... eight, nine, ten. Well done. Okay, now bend your leg. And straighten. And bend. Straighten.”

They do this a few more times, and then the shooting pain hits again and this time she thinks she’s going to black out. She flops back, staring at the ceiling and trying to get her breath back.

“I think that’s enough for today,” he says, moving to look down at her, supporting himself with his hands on either side of her head. 

She nods up at him dazedly as the pain gradually subsides. His expression is full of compassion, and she immediately regrets her sarcastic comebacks. “I’m sorry for snapping at you.”

“It’s okay. I’d be snapping at you if it were the other way round.” He bends to kiss her. “And besides, it reminds me of old times.”

“It does?”

“Yes. Only it’s better, because now I know how to shut you up.”

“Shut me –?“ she begins indignantly but he cuts her off with a kiss to prove his point, and her hands find his hair to pull him closer, her protest forgotten. When he pulls away her face breaks into a wide smile. “Well, I guess it’s a nice way to be shut up.” 

“It’s a nice way to shut you up,” he says, and they grin at each other goofily until she grips his arms.

“Can you help me up? My back is aching too.”

He pulls her into a sitting position, and then sits next to her on the floor while she stretches her leg gently.

“How’s your shoulder?” she asks. The bruise he got from crashing into the walls has completely faded now but he still complains of stiffness sometimes. It had been a harder impact than he’d initially thought. 

“Oh.” He wiggles his shoulder a little. “Yeah, it’s a bit stiff today, to be honest.”

A faint smile crosses her face. His answer is nearly always the same, and she suspects he just enjoys her massages too much to admit his shoulder is fine. Moreover, not surprisingly, the physiotherapy exercises she gets him to do don’t seem to help in the slightest whereas her hands gently massaging his neck and shoulders seem to do the trick. The thought warms her heart. He likes her taking care of him. 

“Okay. Come here.” She manoeuvres herself behind him - she can’t kneel or straddle him because of her leg, so she sits behind him so that she can reach him - and places her hands on his shoulders with her thumbs on his trapezius muscles. He lets out soft little moans as she begins to work the tension from them. After ten minutes she slides her arms around his waist and presses a kiss to his back. 

“You know, if you just want a massage you only have to ask. You don’t have to pretend your shoulder is stiff. I love doing it.”

“I’m not pretending.”

“Hmmm.” She doesn’t believe him but she doesn’t insist. Receiving affection is not something he’s used to, and asking for it even less. That’s fine, though. The important thing is that in some way he lets her know what he wants, and she can give it to him. 

He stands up and bends and lifts her to her feet as if she weighs no more than a sack of flour, and she wraps her arms around him and leans into his solid, reassuring warmth. “Okay,” she says. “Let’s go and do some work in systems control.”

They are still working on the gravity problem, although they had suspended their investigations for a week or so after Abby’s fever, and the sheer enormity of the Ark means that examining the whole of the exterior for damage is taking forever. Not that either of them minds; time is the one thing they are not short of and it gives them something to do. 

Marcus has managed to bring up the 3D images of the Ark on the glass screens in the centre of the room, meaning it’s much easier to study it from all angles, and Abby sits at the console and systematically reroutes power to the external cameras on the different sections of the Ark so that they can scour the exterior for damage. Today they find another piece of satellite embedded in the side of Tesla station and Abby zooms in with the camera so they can examine it more carefully.

“Should we go down and investigate?” She’s not eager to do another spacewalk, and this one would be longer since Tesla is further from Alpha.

“I don’t think it’s necessary,” he murmurs, his eyes roaming over the screen in front of him. “I think it’s fairly safe to say that this damage is what is causing the gravity to fail. We need to monitor the rotation of Tesla, see if there are any irregularities, but we can do that from here.”

“Okay.” She’s relieved. She leans forward on her elbows and examines the screen. “That piece of satellite has damaged some solar panels, hasn’t it?”

“It looks like it. It’s not surprising though.” He purses his lips. “I wonder if that has something to do with the cryopods malfunctioning. It could be causing irregular power surges, which are frying the circuit boards.”

“Oh! You might be right!” Her enthusiasm at his deduction is immediately dampened by the realisation that neither of them knows anything about Tesla station, or how the power is generated and transported from the photovoltaic solar panels to the various parts of the Ark. Electrical engineering of this scale is well beyond their level of expertise. They’ll need to study the power circuits of the Ark, and try to isolate the damaged panels, because if they can, the consequences are huge. “Marcus! If we can stop the cryopods malfunctioning, we can go back into cryo together when we fix the cryopods. There won’t be any need for anyone to stay awake.”

He stares at her for a long moment, and she can’t quite read the expression in his eyes. “Yeah. Of course. We can definitely try.”

She frowns a little at his vaguely underwhelmed reaction, but puts it down to the fact that he doesn’t want to get his hopes up. That, or he still doesn’t feel he deserves to go to Earth. She’ll have to convince him, but it shouldn’t be hard, when his cryopod is fully functioning and the cryosuite is stable. She rubs her temples. Thinking about it gives her a headache.

“I think I might go for a nap,” she says wearily. “I didn’t sleep much last night, and I feel a headache coming on. Will you be okay for a bit?”

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asks at once. 

She smiles. “No. If you come, I won’t get much sleep. You stay here and carry on with this.”

“Okay,” he says reluctantly. “I’ll take a closer look at those damaged solar panels, and then I’ll bring you some lunch. Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” She kisses him softly, and runs her fingers through his hair. “Have fun.” And she gets up and makes her way out of systems control, thinking only of her bed, and sleep.

……………

  
  


She sleeps for three hours in the end, and when she wakes up she’s well rested and headache-free, but hungry. She wonders where Marcus is. He’d said he’d bring her lunch, and a glance at her watch tells her it’s way past lunch time.

She sits up in bed, suddenly concerned. Where the hell is he? She debates going to find him, but Alpha station is huge and her leg isn’t strong enough to walk unnecessary miles. No, she’s better off staying in their quarters; at least he knows where she is, and he’ll come home sooner or later. 

Another hour passes, and there’s still no sign of him. She’s beginning to get cranky again now, her worry and hunger combining to form twisting knots in her stomach. She picks up her data pad and sends him a message.

“Hey, where are you? I’m hungry, and not just for food…” She smirks. If that doesn’t send him rushing back to her, nothing will. 

It doesn’t. He doesn’t even read the message, and when he still doesn’t show up after another hour, she gets out of bed and heads to systems control. Maybe he’s had an accident, and is lying unconscious somewhere. Her heart is pounding in her chest as she limps back along the corridor. Please let him be all right, she pleads in her head. 

Systems control is empty, which is both a disappointment, because she’d hoped to find him still studying the solar panels and scratching his chin in that adorable way he has when he’s lost in thought, but also a relief, because the floor is thankfully free of unconscious bodies. She sits down at the console again and her eyes fall on the screen, which is showing a diagram about isolating solar panels. 

A cold knot forms in her stomach. His last words to her echo in her head: “I’ll take a closer look at these solar panels, and then I’ll bring you some lunch.”  _ A closer look.  _ Dread fills her veins. He wouldn’t have, surely. He’d never do something so dumb as to go on a spacewalk all the way to Tesla on his own, without telling her, would he? Her heart sinks as she realises that yes, he would. Because he wouldn’t want her to come with him, because of her leg. 

“Goddammit, Marcus,” she mutters as tears prick at her eyes. “How could you be so  _ stupid.”  _

She checks her data pad again. He still hasn’t read her message, and after a quick glance around the room she spots his data pad on a desk. He doesn't even have it with him. How is she going to know what’s happened to him? What if he’s floating through space, or suffocating somewhere on Tesla? If he’s injured and needs her but can’t contact her? Is she going to spend the rest of her life here alone, never knowing exactly what had happened to the man she loves? The thought is gut wrenching, and she suddenly feels like she can't breathe. Recognising the signs of a panic attack, she sits down and breathes deeply, grounding herself by mentally naming the things she can see around her. 

When she’s calmer again, and able to think clearly, she makes a plan of action. First she needs to search all of Alpha, to be sure he’s not here. She decides to check the cryosuite first, because maybe there were problems there, although she hasn’t heard the alarm ringing. 

The cryosuite is also empty. She checks all of their usual places, even the observation room, wondering if maybe he fell asleep there while he was watching the stars, although why he’d go and watch the stars instead of making her lunch is beyond her. Not that she can’t believe she’s not first and foremost in his thoughts, but it’s just not like him to get sidetracked by something so trivial. Marcus Kane is nothing if not focused.

He’s not in the observation room, so she heads to the mess, but that’s empty too. She decides to go back to their quarters, for lack of a better idea. She’ll try and wait patiently a bit longer, because even if he has gone on the spacewalk to Tesla, he could very well make it back safely.

She opens the door to their room, and there he is, sitting on the chair, a worried and faintly annoyed expression on his face. He jumps up when she enters.

“Marcus!!” Her frustration is forgotten in the relief of seeing him and she flings herself into his arms, crushing him to her. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you!”

“I’ve been looking all over for you too! I thought you said you were resting?”

“I  _ was!  _ Until I woke up and didn’t know where you were! I thought you’d gone to Tesla without me, and you were lying somewhere suffocating –” Her voice breaks as tears well in her eyes.

“Abby! How could you ever think I would do something like that?” He seems appalled that the idea would even cross her mind.

“Because you’re a self-sacrificing idiot who doesn’t realise how important you are to me?”

“Hey, hey,” he murmurs, his attitude immediately one of regret. “I would never do anything to risk leaving you alone here.” He pulls her into his arms, wrapping her tightly in his embrace. “I came to see if you wanted lunch, but you were so fast asleep I thought I’d wait a while. Then when I came back again, you weren’t here, so I went looking for you.”

“But I was looking for  _ you.”  _ She shakes her head in disbelief. “Are you telling me we’ve been chasing each other all over the Ark all afternoon?”

“It looks like it,” he chuckles, and she pulls away and glares at him. 

“It’s not funny. I nearly had a panic attack imagining you lying dead somewhere.”

“Oh God. I’m sorry.” He looks chagrined.

“And my leg could have done without all that walking, to be honest.”

“Well, if you’d just stayed here…” he says with a slight roll of his eyes. “Is it hurting?”

“A bit, yes.”

He pulls her close again, slipping his arms around her waist, and as he buries his head to kiss her neck she feels herself weakening, now that her panic has given way to relief that he’s okay. 

“I can make it up to you,” he murmurs.

“Oh really?” she sighs, more placated by his lips on her skin and his hands slipping underneath her T-shirt than what he’s saying.

“I brought you a surprise.”

She stills. “A surprise?”

“I made you oatmeal cookies.”

She draws back to look him in the eyes, trying to work out if he’s serious. “You made  _ cookies?” _

“Yes.” He looks slightly bashful. “Well, I tried. It was my first attempt, so I don’t know what they’re like.”

She feels laughter bubbling inside her. “Oh, Marcus. You mean while I was panicking that you were lying dead on Tesla, you were  _ baking?” _

He just grins back at her, and her heart melts, because he looks so pleased with himself. Her eyes fall to the table, where there are two bowls of soup and a plate with eight small oatmeal cookies on it. They look delicious, and her mouth waters just looking at them.

She’s so overcome that words fail her, so she just pulls him into a long kiss. “Thank you,” she manages. “Can I try one?”

“Before the soup?”

“How can I eat soup when there are cookies?” she asks, and with a chuckle he reaches for the plate and passes it to her. She takes a one - it’s still ever so slightly warm, and smells wonderful - and bites into it. 

She’s eaten very few things in her life which she can say she actually likes. Food on the Ark was just sustenance, fuel to keep them alive, but every so often there would be something that made her taste buds tingle a little more and she was able to get a glimpse of what it was like to actually  _ enjoy  _ food, as people had before the apocalypse. Marcus’s pasta was one such thing, but nothing could have prepared her for the exquisitely sweet, warm, buttery explosion of perfection that fills her mouth with the first bite of cookie. Her eyes flutter closed to savour it better, and she can’t help the little moan of rapture that escapes her. 

“Fuck, Marcus,” she sighs when she’s swallowed the first bite. “They’re amazing.” When she opens her eyes he’s watching her, his eyes dark with hunger that’s probably  _ not  _ for the cookies. With a little smile she takes another bite, and this time the experience is so intense she wonders if it’s actually possible to orgasm from food. Her legs grow weak and she leans against him, and his arm around her waist is tighter than it should be, as if he’s trying to control himself. 

“How can you be so hot eating a cookie,” he groans into her hair, but she hardly hears him, because all her senses are focused on the pleasurable flavours flooding her mouth. By the time she finishes the cookie she’s weak with bliss. 

“Oh God. I love you. That was the best thing ever.” She kisses him again. “Thank you.”

“It was worth being up to my elbows in flour all afternoon just to see you enjoy them,” he says. “That was incredibly erotic.”

She looks up at him, an idea forming in her mind. “Tomorrow it’s my turn to do something for you. I’ll be busy all day, but just come to my quarters at seven, okay?”

“You mean I can’t see you all day?” He looks disappointed. 

“No,” she says, touching her finger to his lips with a mysterious smile. “But trust me. It’ll be worth it.” 

  
  



	25. Chapter 25

Abby’s awake early the next morning. He can feel her stirring next to him while he still drifts in and out of sleep, can almost hear the cogs in her head turning as her brain boots up and starts thinking about the day ahead. He smiles inwardly but keeps his eyes closed, hoping that she won’t get up at least until he’s awake, but to his dismay she rolls over towards her side of the bed and throws the covers back.

“Don’t go yet,” he says, his arm sneaking around her waist as she’s about to sit up and pulling her back to him. “It’s so early.”

“I have lots of things to do,” she protests, but he’s rewarded by her turning towards him and settling into his arms. “Five minutes, okay?”

“Okay.” He wraps his arms around her and presses a kiss to her head. These moments of quiet intimacy, of just lying together in a state of semi-wakefulness, each lost in their own world despite being physically more entwined than he thought was humanly possible, are among his favourite moments. Well, apart from when they’re doing those other wonderfully exciting things they do, of course, but it’s best he doesn’t think about those now or he’ll never let her get out of bed. 

He turns his thoughts to his day to distract himself. He’s going to study the photovoltaic power plant on Tesla, and try to isolate those damn dinosaurs which are having a tea party there and causing havoc with the gravity.

“...Marcus!”

“Huh?” He opens his eyes sleepily, and is met with her deep brown eyes just inches from his. 

“You literally fell _straight_ back to sleep.”

“I didn’t.”

She chuckles. “You did. You were snoring.”

“Are you sure?” A vague image of dinosaurs comes into his head and he thinks she might be right. She usually is. She simply wraps her arms around his neck, though, and then her lips are on his and her breasts are pressed against him and suddenly he’s _wide_ awake. 

Her free hand moves from his hair to trail down his abdomen and brush lightly against him. He smiles into the kiss; it looks like she’s changed her mind about getting out of bed so early after all. Her fingers are featherlight but her touch sends shockwaves of desire through him. He deepens the kiss, pulling her closer and inadvertently increasing the delicious pressure of her hand, and begins to slip his fingers under the elastic of her panties to pull them down.

And then suddenly she’s _gone,_ her hand and her mouth and her breasts and warmth and softness replaced by a cold emptiness, and he collapses onto the pillow in disbelief.

“You goddamn _tease,”_ he laughs as the bathroom door slams behind her.

“What’s that? I can’t hear you.” Her voice is muffled by the bathroom door, although he’s pretty sure she has a good idea what he said. She comes out ten minutes later, washed and ready to start the day, and even though she drives him crazy _and_ he’s sad he won’t see her for a whole day, he can’t help feeling uplifted by the colour in her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes. Today she is a woman with a purpose, and he’s never been happier to see it. 

He just wishes he knew what she was planning. 

She bends to kiss him. “I’ll see you tonight,” she says, her voice still low and husky. “Seven o’clock, okay? Don’t be late.” She gives him another lingering kiss.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he croaks as she walks to the door. With a last kiss blown in his direction she’s gone, and he lies in bed smiling to himself, tingling with anticipation for the surprise. Actually he’s more than tingling, he’s still achingly hard and he’s half tempted to take care of himself but in the end he opts for a shower a few degrees cooler than usual. 

……………

He works on the solar panels all morning, surprised to find that there are a large number of video lessons on the subject, and it’s a good job that he’s studying alone because many of them are by Jake Griffin and he’s not sure Abby would be able to watch them. He notes with interest that in some ways it’s a blessing she’s not there; he loves her and he loves being with her but he can’t deny she’s a distraction. He makes good progress, watching the videos and taking notes and studying the 3D image of the Ark on the screen as Jake’s voice patiently explains the theory. 

When his tummy starts rumbling at lunchtime he goes back to his quarters in search of protein bars - Abby has given him a list of places that are off limits to him all day, and the mess is one of them - and finds that she’s left him a bowl of bean soup, a note and something black folded up on the table. He sits down to eat the soup and picks up the note. 

_Eat and rest up this afternoon,_ he reads in her scrawling doctor’s handwriting. _I need you full of energy tonight, big boy._

He chokes on his soup at the last two words. _Big boy!!_ When has she ever called him anything like that? He splutters and coughs, but as he wipes the tears from his eyes his discomfort slowly gives way to a smile. She’s completely ridiculous, he thinks with a shake of his head. His eyes drop to the next line of writing. 

_Wear this._

He picks up the black piece of material, and is surprised to find it’s an actual shirt, with buttons and a collar. He’s never owned one in his life; clothes on the Ark were practical, made to cover and warm, not look good. He’s always a couple of grey T-shirts, and his black jacket, but never anything like this. He’s not used to wearing something so elegant, but he’ll try it of course. He’ll try anything for her. 

The words echo with familiarity, and he kicks himself when he remembers the last time they had entered his head, about being handcuffed to the bed. He _had_ tried it for her and it had resulted in such an insanely intense orgasm that for the first time he’d fallen straight to sleep afterwards, much to her glee (and his embarrassment, of course.) The problem is that as incredible as it was, he really doesn’t need to be reminded of it right now, not after her teasing and the subsequent cold shower he’d had to take that morning. 

He wills his body back into obedience and finishes his soup, and then decides to take a nap; she said she wants him well rested after all. 

_Big boy._

…………...

  
  


Abby has been playing scientist for the last hour, mixing and stirring different ingredients to get the desired effect, but nothing is working and she’s beginning to lose hope. She checks her watch; four fifteen. She has time. She adds a drop of the mixture to the liquid in the bowl in front of her and stirs it agitatedly. The liquid turns cloudy grey, which is _not_ the result she wants, and with a groan she chucks it all away and starts again. Back to the drawing board; something is clearly not right. 

She has a back-up plan if she can’t create the substance she wants, so she’s not that worried, but she’d love to be able to do this for him. And everything else is more or less ready, so there’s no rush. She’s glad of the chance to sit down while she prepares this, because her leg is aching after all the lifting and dragging she’d done that morning. Not to speak of the _cleaning._ She’s pretty sure he’s going to yell at her when he sees what she’s done by herself so she’s determined to make sure there are plenty of things to distract him. She smirks to herself. That shouldn’t be hard; she only has to take her T-shirt off and he can no longer think straight. _Men,_ she thinks with a roll of her eyes, but the thought makes her happy. He’s ridiculously adorable. 

She finally gets the result she wants and seals the concoction in a small jar, ready for later. Butterflies flutter in her stomach. She can’t wait. 

…………...

He’s surprised to find that by the time seven pm comes around he’s jittery and restless. He can’t wait to see her – it’s the longest they’ve been apart in months – but he’s also apprehensive about what she has planned, because he knows that she has a hopelessly romantic side to her and frankly he’s not very good at that sort of thing. He takes a deep breath. _Relax,_ he tells himself. _It’s Abby. You love her. She loves you. That’s all that matters._

He changes into the black button down she’d left for him and turns to admire himself in the small mirror above the sink. He buttons it all the way down, but then on second thoughts undoes the top button so the collar opens. It looks good, and he contemplates undoing the second button too. He goes back and forth between one and two buttons undone and finally decides on two, because it feels more laid back and relaxed. The shirt is a little short on the sleeves so he turns the cuffs up but it fits snugly across his chest and upper arms and overall he’s pleased with the effect. With a final flick of his fingers through his hair he heads out of the door and towards her quarters. 

He knocks on her door and waits with butterflies of anticipation. When there’s no answer he opens the door and goes in, but her room is empty. He frowns. Surely he hasn’t been stood up, he thinks with a nervous internal laugh. It wouldn’t surprise him. The last man alive and he gets stood up. That would be just his luck. His eyes scan the room and fall on a note on the table, and he crosses the room to pick it up. 

_Come to medical xxx_

He’s kind of relieved she’s dropped the big boy thing but the note is conspicuously devoid of sentiment. Also - _medical??_ He can’t imagine for the life of him what she’s got planned for him in medical. Is her idea of a hot date a lesson on open heart surgery? He wouldn’t put it past her. Still, he knows better than to question her so he sets off in the direction of medical. 

When he gets to medical and finds that empty too, he starts to think she’s taking him on a wild goose chase around Alpha station and he’s finally going to end up back in his quarters where she’ll be lying in bed eating cookies and smirking at him. This time though he’s onto her game so he immediately searches for a note telling him where to go next and finds one stuck to a cupboard door. This one is short and to the point too, and even more confusing. 

_The door opposite xxx_

The door opposite the cupboard? That doesn’t make sense, there’s only a wall opposite the cupboard, so he goes to the door of medical and looks out into the corridor. There’s a door slightly to the left on the opposite side of the corridor, but opposite enough to be considered opposite. The door is ever so slightly ajar, and there’s an unusually soft orange light emanating from it.

Intrigued, he pushes it open and steps inside. 

It takes his eyes a moment to adjust after the harsh white light of the corridor. The room is in darkness except for the soft glow of dozens of tiny candles scattered about the room and the effect is enchanting, almost otherworldly. He blinks a little to focus, and when he does he thinks he must have actually died and gone to heaven.

Abby is standing in the middle of the room, but it’s Abby as he’s never seen her before. Gone are the braid and sweatpants she’s sported pretty much constantly since she woke up. Now her hair is soft and loose and slightly curly around her face, and she’s wearing a black dress with shoestring straps that hugs her breasts and waist and then falls more softly to her knees. She’s _taller_ somehow as well, and as his eyes travel over her curves and down her bare legs he realises she’s wearing shoes with heels that he’s never seen before. He drags his eyes with difficulty back to her face. The light of the candles is reflecting in her eyes and her mouth is curved in a smile which is both amusement at his befuddled state, and faint apprehension at how he’s going to react. 

Unfortunately the blood in his head has rushed south and it’s all he can do to stare at her open-mouthed, but she seems satisfied with that reaction. Her face relaxes slightly and she walks towards him, her heels making a metallic tap on the hard floor. When she reaches him she snakes her arms around his neck and kisses him softly, then draws back to smile at him. 

“Hi,” she says. 

“Abby –“ It’s all he can stutter out, and he swallows as he tries to gather his faculties to form a coherent sentence. “You look stunning.”

“Thank you –“ she begins but he touches his finger to her lips to stop her. 

“Don’t say it.”

“Say what?” Her brow creases slightly in confusion.

“Big boy.”

Her face breaks into a wide smile. “You didn’t like it?”

“It’s ridiculous,” he says and she laughs, a deep musical peel of laughter that makes his heart soar. 

“I wanted to make you laugh,” she says, nuzzling his nose with hers and pressing another kiss to his mouth. 

“Well, you succeeded. I nearly choked on my soup.”

“Oh. That’s not good.” She’s serious now, her eyes gazing into his, and he runs his hands up and down her back and over her hips. 

“I like this dress,” he says. “You’re always beautiful, but tonight you’re – you’re –“ Words fail him, because there is literally no adjective superlative enough to express how she looks. She’s glowing with an almost ethereal beauty, her skin warm and golden in the candlelight, her hair cascading in soft waves around her shoulders. The snug fit of the dress leaves a tantalising glimpse of the gentle swell of her breasts. “I like it _a lot,”_ he breathes. 

“Well, you’re very – too,” she purrs, deliberately omitting the adjective as he had. “This shirt is _very_ hot.” Her fingers caress the skin of his chest where the buttons are open, and it’s such a simple but sexy gesture that suddenly he’s no longer able to control himself. His mouth crashes onto hers and he wraps her in his arms, and he kisses her like the Ark really is running out of oxygen, and she’s the only thing keeping him alive. 

She’s hardly a submissive participant, though. Her hands fly to grip his hair so hard it’s nearly painful whilst her tongue battles his for dominance, her desire for him so strong and fierce it’s almost overwhelming. He brings his hands lower to grip her ass and crush her against him, and she lets out a breathless moan into his mouth. 

“Marcus…”

“Let’s go to bed,” he murmurs. “Please.”

“No.” She shakes her head, her mouth still on his. “No. I have other plans for us.” 

“Oh?” He’s curious as to what could be more exciting than going straight to bed, but he trusts her. At this point he’s pretty sure that whatever it is, it doesn’t involve scalpels. 

“Yes. Look.” She turns her head and he follows her gaze to the other thing in the room, which hadn’t really registered in his brain. It’s a kind of container, about six feet long by three feet wide, and about a foot and a half deep, and it’s full of water. Not just water, though; water with foamy white bubbles on the surface. 

“A _bath?”_ he asks incredulously, and he wants to focus on the logistics of this but in the end all he can think about is that they will be getting naked very quickly. 

She smiles in satisfaction. “Yes. Have you ever had one?”

“No, of course not. It was only ever for medical use.”

“Right. Not now though.” Her fingers move to unbutton his shirt, tantalisingly slowly, and he grows impatient, already imagining being submerged in the warm scented water, her naked body in his arms. He brings his mouth to kiss her neck and she giggles breathlessly, still fumbling with the buttons. When she has them all undone she places her warm hands on his chest, running them over his muscles, brushing lightly over his nipples and making him shudder with pleasure. 

“Abby…” he moans into her neck, and she makes quick work of pushing the shirt off his shoulders. 

“Undo me,” she says, turning and lifting her hair to expose the buttons on the back of the dress. He undoes them and the straps slide off her shoulders, then the dress slips to the floor and he doesn’t know if he’s surprised or not to find she’s deliciously naked underneath, but he can’t help the groan that escapes him as he pulls her back against him, one hand cupping her breast as the other roams over her stomach. She stops him with her hand on his before he reaches the soft silky hair at the apex of her thighs. 

“Wait,” she says. “All in good time.” Then she pulls away from him and he watches as she walks across the room, and steps out of her shoes and into the bath, sinking into the water with an inviting smirk.

“Come on,” she says. “What are you waiting for?”

He fumbles to remove his trousers and shoes as fast as he can and then steps into the bath, sitting down opposite her and sighing with delight at the sensation of the warm, soapy water washing over his skin. He closes his eyes for a moment in bliss, and when he opens them she’s watching him intently, a small smile playing on her face. 

“It feels good, huh?”

“It’s amazing,” he sighs. “How did you make these bubbles?”

“Secrets of the trade,” she says darkly, and he laughs and closes his eyes again. 

“You’re a woman of many talents.” 

“Oh, I am,” she says. “Did you guess what I had planned?”

“Nope. I had no idea. Although I was very worried when I got to your quarters and you weren’t there. I thought I’d been stood up. I felt like I was nineteen again.”

She laughs. “I’m sorry. Were you stood up when you were nineteen?”

“Once,” he says. “My ego never recovered.”

“I’m sorry. Tell me who it was and I’ll beat her up.”

He grins at the idea of her beating anyone up, because she’s a doctor and would never willingly inflict harm on anyone, except when it came to inoculations of course. 

Her eyes soften. “You’re too far away. Come here, I want to hold you.”

“Isn’t it better if you come here? I’ll squash you.”

“You won’t. The water helps support your weight. Now come here.” Her voice is low and quietly commanding so he does as he’s told, wriggling around until he’s facing the same way as her and then lying back into her arms. 

“Are you sure I’m not squashing you?”

“I’m sure,” she reassures him. “Are you comfortable?”

“Never better.” He could never have imagined _this,_ he thinks, back when he’d decided that love wasn’t for him; this feeling of being cherished, that a woman like Abby could find happiness in caring for _him._

“Good,” she says, taking some bubbles in her hands and rubbing them over his shoulders and arms. “So how was your day?”

“Okay. I worked on the solar panel systems, and then I took a nap.” He pauses to enjoy the feel of her hands travelling down his chest, and over his pectoral muscles. “How was your day?”

“Busy. But worth it, to see the look on your face when you walked in.” 

He closes his eyes. “I can’t believe you did all this for me. I don’t even want to think about how you got this tub in here all by yourself.”

“I have a magic wand,” she whispers. “And I just say the magic words and things move on their own. But you have to know the right magic words.”

“You know, I could almost believe you.” It’s a magical experience, the candles and the foamy scented water and her hands making his skin tingle wherever she touches him. That is, until she takes some foam and dots it on his nose with a tiny giggle. 

“Abby!” He picks some foam up with his hands and turns slightly to dab it on her nose, but before he can she presses soft open mouthed kisses to his neck while her other hand slips beneath the water to wrap around his length, and his revenge is forgotten. 

He’s been hard for her all day, ever since her teasing that morning, and he realises now that she’s _still_ teasing him, because with her behind him he can’t touch her at all. He can feel the soft press of her breasts against his back and her warm breath in his ear and her hand doing all kinds of wonderful things under the water but goddammit it’s not enough, he wants _her,_ and she’s keeping herself tantalisingly out of reach. With a small growl he takes control of the situation, and manoeuvres them both until he’s underneath and she’s straddling him, after a little yelp of surprise from her and much splashing and sloshing of the water.

“Now stop being such a tease,” he murmurs, reaching to take a nipple in his mouth, and he's rewarded with little gasps of pleasure as he sucks and flicks the little pink bud to a stiff peak. He moves his attention to the other one and she rakes her fingers through his hair, her breathing becoming faster as his ministrations send waves of pleasure through her. When he guesses she can’t take any more he lifts her hips slightly and pushes inside her, and it’s such an overwhelming relief for both of them that they both cry out. For a moment they just stay there, forehead to forehead, as she adjusts herself around him, and then she slowly starts to move, and he’s in ecstasy. 

They’ve never tried this position, because her injury meant that she couldn’t support herself in bed, but here in the bath the water gives her a buoyancy that takes the weight off her leg. It only takes a couple of movements from her, lifting her hips and then sitting back down onto him, for him to decide this is his favourite position ever. She’s _everywhere,_ and exactly where he wants her. He has full access to her breasts with both his hands and mouth, and his hands can wander over her back and down to the firm roundness of her buttocks to control the speed and depth of her movements. He can kiss her neck, which makes her sighs of pleasure grow wilder, and best of all he can watch her face, he can see the love in her eyes, flashing with the same intensity with which she used to argue with him, and he knows now that it’s the same flame burning; the passion that drove her to disagree so vehemently with him is the same passion with which she now loves him; fierce but protective, uncompromising but selfless. 

They come almost at the same time, Abby a split second before him, and she’s beautiful as her head tips back and soft guttural cries of release escape her. The sight of her brings him to his own orgasm in a flash of blinding white, hot and intense. 

She collapses on top of him, spent and breathless, and the only sounds are their breathing and the bathwater lapping gently over their bodies. He wraps his arms around her and kisses her head, and his exhilaration slowly begins to ebb into a feeling of absolute contentment and peace. He’s never known happiness like this, and not for the first time he closes his eyes and sends a silent _thank you_ to the twist of fate that has given them this time together. 

  
  



	26. Chapter 26

After the bath, which Marcus never wants to get out of despite the fact that the water is getting cold and their fingers are wrinkled, they get dressed again and head to the mess. She’s prepared some food, small pasta parcels filled with re-hydrated vegetables and cookies for dessert, accompanied by plenty of moonshine to wash it down. They eat by candlelight with soft music playing to make the huge mess a little more intimate, and the reflection of the flames dancing in Marcus’s dark eyes makes butterflies dance inside her. He looks so incredibly handsome; the shirt brings out the inky black of his eyes and shows enough chest to make her want to rip it off him right there in the mess hall. She smirks to herself. There isn’t actually anything stopping her from doing just that, since everyone else is in cryo. 

He looks happier than she’s ever seen him as he clinks his mug of moonshine gently against hers. “Thank you for a lovely evening,” he says. “I can’t believe you did all this for me.”

Her heart constricts, because he still doesn’t really believe he deserves this. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I had fun too. It’s not every day a girl gets to wear a dress like this. We should do it more often.”

“We should,” he agrees. “Where did you find the dress, anyway?” 

She can understand his curiosity, because nice clothes weren’t common on the Ark, and he’s probably never seen her dressed like this, even when she was with Jake. Not that he ever used to go to dances and parties. 

“It was in the pile of clothes you brought back from Factory,” she says. “I had to adapt it a bit. It was way too big for me.”

“And you did all this today?” 

“No. I’ve been working on it for a while. I wanted to surprise you.”

He beams with happiness as he chews on his food, and her heart swells. “You did.”

“I’m glad.”

“So tell me,” he says, his eyes dancing. “How many times did you use the bath before cryo?”

“A couple,” she admits. “But always for medical reasons.” 

He raises an eyebrow sceptically. “Really?”

“Well… no.”

He gives her a faintly amused smile, but it’s as if he’s not seeing her, like he’s looking right through her. 

“What are you thinking about?” she asks.

He blinks and focuses, and turns his attention back to his food. “I was imagining doing the rounds one evening and finding you in the bath, all naked and soapy,” he says. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

“You’d have floated me,” she says without thinking. “I was breaking the law.”

He closes his eyes and gives a little shake of his head, trying to block out her words. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth. You can’t tell me we didn’t float other people for similar crimes.”

His shoulders sag, and he puts his fork down and pushes his empty plate to the side. “Well, this turned dark quickly.”

She eats her last mouthful of food too, and takes his hands in hers across the table. “Hey. It’s over now. Hopefully on the ground, our people will find a better way of life, and won’t have to live under such a harsh regime. And it will all have been worth it.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” His expression lifts a little, and her heart lifts too. She searches her head for a way to bring the conversation back to lighter topics. 

“Okay, so let’s imagine it wasn’t a capital crime. What would you have done if you’d found me in the bathtub?” 

He immediately gets where she’s going, and a glint appears in his eye. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess I would have helped you wash your back. Make sure it was done properly.” 

She grins at him. This is such a typical answer for him. “Always the perfectionist.”

“Of course.” He smirks at her as he takes a drink of moonshine. “What would _you_ have done, if I’d caught you?”

She doesn’t even need to think about that one. “I’d have invited you to join me. Then you’d have been as guilty as I was. But I’d have made it worth your while.” She's fantasizing, of course; they both know that.

“So sneaky,” he says, with a disbelieving shake of his head, but they grin at each other, each lost in their own fantasies of what might have been. 

“We should try that…” she ventures vaguely, emboldened by the moonshine. She breaks a cookie in two and puts a piece in her mouth.

He frowns. “Try what?”

“You know. Pretending it was before cryo, and you find me in the bath, and punish me.” 

“Oh.” His eyes are dark with lust. “I would enjoy that.”

She flushes a little but holds his gaze, thrills of pleasure shooting through her. “Me too.” 

They finish the cookies and she pours them some more moonshine. She’s had two glasses already, and her head is starting to feel delightfully light and swirly. The table between them is beginning to annoy her, so she stands and takes the plates to the kitchen, and when she comes back to him she holds out her hands. 

“Dance with me.” 

He grimaces. “Abby, you know I’m not good at dancing.”

“We’re not going to do the foxtrot, silly. Come on.” She takes his hands and pulls him to his feet, and she slips her arms around his neck. He smells of the bubbles she made and it makes her giggle. “You smell bubbly,” she says as his hands on the small of her back draw her closer. 

“So do you,” he says, pressing his lips to her hair. “What did you put in it?”

“Rosemary oil.”

“Oh, so I smell like roses? That’s very manly.”

She looks up at him to see if he’s serious. He is. “Not roses, Marcus. Rosemary. It’s an aromatic herb.”

“Oh, okay.” He seems satisfied with that, and she feels a rush of love for him. There’s such a tenderness to him, underneath his more reserved outer shell, that appeals to something deep inside her, and if she’s honest with herself she might admit that it always has done. She’d seen it a few times, back before cryo; like the way he’d looked at her when Ridley had hurt her. A brief glimpse into the man behind the armour. Maybe that’s what their constant bickering had been about, she thinks. Trying to chip away the hard outer shell, to see what was underneath. 

They sway gently but she’s not sure if it’s to the music or if it’s just their attempt at standing up straight after the moonshine they’ve drunk. Her fingers feather through his hair at the nape of his neck, and his beard is prickly against her temple. She closes her eyes and for a moment the mess is full of people, dancing and having fun. She wonders what everyone would think to see her and Marcus dancing together like this. They’d be shocked, she thinks, or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe other people had seen all along what they themselves had been blind to. She wraps her arms around him more tightly and she can feel him smiling against her head. 

“What are you thinking about?”

She hums. “How I cracked open your shell.”

“What?”

“How you were all hard and now you’re all soft,” she explains, but she has a feeling he’s not following her, and she can’t really blame him because she’s not sure what she means either. It all made sense a moment ago.

“I can assure you, I’m not in the least bit soft right now.”

She chuckles, the truth in his statement evident against her stomach. “You’re insatiable.”

“And you’re irresistible.” His arms tighten around her, and his arousal is even more obvious. 

She lifts her head to look at him “Maybe we should go to bed so I can take care of that, big boy,” she purrs. 

His hands still on her back. “Are you drunk? You’re drunk, aren’t you.”

“I’m not.” She can’t hide the little hiccup that escapes her though. 

He chuckles. “You are. Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

“Can’t say no to an offer like that,” she grins and he laughs, and they make their way out of the mess and towards their quarters, Marcus pausing only long enough to blow out the candles and switch off the music. 

……………

He lets her sleep the next morning, figuring she must be worn out after the day of preparations for their date, and she’s probably going to have a bit of a headache as well. She’d passed out as soon as her head had hit the pillow, despite her protests all the way back to their room that she was neither tired nor drunk. He didn’t mind; he was exhausted himself after the bath and food and moonshine, and certainly wasn’t up for another round of energetic sex. 

He showers and gets dressed, planning on going to systems control to continue studying the power plant on Tesla. She’s still out for the count so he leaves her some painkillers and a glass of water on the nightstand, and drops a kiss onto her head. He can’t help smiling at the memory of their date. It had truly been the most amazing evening of his life. How could he ever have imagined, when he woke up eighteen months ago and thought he was going to die alone on the Ark, that the best times of his life were yet to come?

He tries to hold on to the lightness in his heart throughout the morning, but the situation with the solar panels is discouraging. He’s torn between needing Abby to wake up so that he can share his findings, because she’s such a pillar of strength and hope for him, and not wanting her to wake up, because she’s still happily cocooned in the bliss of the previous evening and he wants her to stay in that bubble for as long as possible. 

It’s nearly lunchtime when she rolls up to systems control, bleary eyed and yawning. “Hi,” she says, sitting down next to him with a sleepy smile and a kiss. “How’s it going?”

“Still working on it,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay. I have a headache, so I took some painkillers.”

He ruffles her hair. “I wonder why that is.”

“I might have drunk too much moonshine.”

He says nothing; he’s not the kind of person to say I told you so, and anyway, he’s discovered that drunk Abby is incredibly lovable. It had taken them twice as long to get back to their room because she kept stopping to kiss him and tell him she loves him. 

She turns her attention to the screen in front of him, which is showing a diagram of the section of solar panels which has been damaged. “Is this the damaged section?” 

“Yes.”

“Any progress on how to isolate them?”

“Yeah. Are you up to hearing it?” Part of him is hoping she’ll say no. 

“Of course. Tell me everything.”

“Okay. Unfortunately the only way is to physically take them out of the system.”

“Remove them, you mean?”

“Well, no. But bypass them, disconnecting them from the intact panels on either side, and connecting the good panels to each other. Unfortunately the only way to do that is –“

“A spacewalk,” she says, and he nods.

“I’ve been trying to weigh up the risks,” he says. “Disconnecting the faulty panels will temporarily cut power to the whole Ark, including the CO2 scrubbers, so air quality will temporarily decrease.”

“Well, that’s not a problem, because we’ll have oxygen tanks on for the spacewalk.”

“Abby.” He takes her hand in his. She’s not going to like what he has to say next. “ _If_ we do this, I have to go alone. You’ll be needed here.”

“Okay,” she says suspiciously. “I don’t like the sound of that, but go on. I’m sure you have your reasons.”

“Disconnecting this section of the solar panels will also cut the power to the cryosuite.”

“ _What??_ Marcus, no! Everyone will die!” Her eyes are wild with panic. “What about the emergency back-up power?”

“The generators run on hydrogen sucked in from space,” he explains. “But they also consume oxygen, which would further decrease the air quality while mains power is off. The people in cryo are already consuming the minimum oxygen necessary for survival. Any less and they’ll die anyway, or suffer irreversible brain damage.”

She rubs her temples. “Are there no other options?”

“There are,” he says, and her face brightens. “That’s where you come in. We’ll have to use a battery to power the cryosuite instead of the generators. That way, oxygen levels will be maintained, but even the biggest battery we have will only give us approximately eight minutes of power for the whole cryosuite. That’s why I need you to be here, to activate it the split second before I disconnect the panels.”

She’s silent, and he can see her mind is processing everything, systematically evaluating the risks and benefits. 

“So,” she says at last. “The risks are you having to do a spacewalk to Tesla all by yourself, which I am _not_ happy about, and running the whole cryosuite on a battery for eight minutes, after which time everyone will die or suffer brain damage?”

“Well, yes.” Put like that it doesn’t sound at all simple.

“And the benefits are that the cryopods will stop malfunctioning, meaning that no one else will wake up, and we can both go back into cryo when we fix our cryopods. There will be no need for anyone to be awake.”

He hesitates. “That’s not the main benefit. You see, the problem is that the panels are extremely unstable. We’re lucky so far that they’ve only fried the circuit boards of our two cryopods, and caused another two to malfunction. But at any moment they could cause a power surge that could fry the whole cryosuite, and even though we are awake we’d never be able to save everybody if all the pods started thawing at the same time. And of course, we’d all die anyway if everyone is awake, because life support on the Ark can't sustain that many people.”

“So you think it’s worth the risk?” 

“I don’t think we have a choice, Abby. It’s a spacewalk, to disconnect a cable from one solar panel and connect it to another one, and it could save the human race.”

She sinks her head onto her arms on the table, and he can almost see the despair running through her body. He strokes her hair, trying to distract himself from what he has to tell her next by concentrating on the silky strands between his fingers. He has to tell her, though, before she gets her hopes up too much. He’s already hurt her enough by not being honest with her about the night her cryopod thawed.

“Abby, look at me a moment. There’s something else I have to tell you.”

She raises her head, and his heart almost breaks at the trust he sees in her eyes. “What is it?”

His heart is pounding and his mouth is dry. “Remember when you had a fever, and you had that nightmare that there was a problem with Clarke’s cryopod?”

“Yes.” She frowns. “And there was. You said you fixed it.”

“I did. I just didn’t tell you how.”

She nods slowly, her eyes far away, remembering their conversation. “Right. You didn’t. So how _did_ you fix it?”

He takes a deep breath. “I replaced the faulty sensor in Clarke’s pod with the one from my cryopod.”

“What?” It’s barely more than a whisper, but he can see her mind is already piecing together the information. “But that means…” she trails off as her eyes fill with tears. 

“Yes,” he says heavily. “Even if we fix the cryosuite, my cryopod will never work again.” He swallows. “I’ll never be able to go back into cryo, Abby.”

  
  



	27. Chapter 27

Systems control suddenly feels claustrophobic, like the room is closing in on her. Abby stares at him, hot tears pricking at her eyes. His expression is so desolate, she knows his heart is aching as much as hers at the news he’s given her. Another thought is filtering through the pain.

“You saved Clarke’s life.” 

“Well, yes,” he says gruffly. “But I would have done it for anyone.”

She pushes her chair out and stands and walks away from him, trying to order her thoughts. “Clarke’s my daughter. You should have taken the part from my cryopod to save her.”

“Abby… It wouldn’t have made any difference. We’d still only have one working cryopod, and you would be the one who’s going to use it. We’ve talked about this.”

“We have,” she says. “And I told you I’m not leaving you. What don’t you understand about that?” She’s seething with frustration. He’s so self-sacrificing, but he doesn’t realise it  _ hurts  _ her to think he’d put her back into cryo so easily. How can he throw away this happiness they’ve found? It can’t mean so little to him, surely? 

“I understand,” he says. “But I have to give you the choice. Because I love you, and you being happy is the most important thing in the world to me, even if it means I don’t get to be with you.”

“Oh Marcus.” Her heart breaks and the tears finally slide down her cheeks. “Don’t you see that’s the same for me too? How can I go back into cryo knowing you’ll be here all alone forever? Knowing that when I wake up you’ll be dead?”

He closes his eyes. “I’d be okay,” he whispers. “Just knowing you were going to the ground would make it all worthwhile.” He swallows. “I just want you to live the best life, because you deserve it. You don’t deserve to be stuck here with me, never seeing your daughter again. Never seeing Earth, never being a doctor for our people.”

She’s silent, turning over his words in her head. They’re beautiful words, an expression of a love so deep and true and selfless, but as always, there’s a flip side to the coin. Very few selfless acts are ever truly selfless. 

“No, Marcus.  _ You  _ don’t feel you deserve this happiness,” she says, and his mouth falls open at her words. “You want me to live my best life, but how can I if I’ve lost you? Don’t you see I will miss you forever? My life will never be the same again, but all you think about is that  _ you _ don’t deserve this. You’re not thinking about me.”

His brow creases in hurt. “That’s not true –“ he begins.

“Isn’t it?”

They stare at each other for a moment. He takes a deep breath. “No. I want what’s best for you, and I’ll do anything to get it.”

She steps towards him, and reaches to take his face between her palms, forcing him to look her in the eyes. “Then fight for me, Marcus. Fight for _ us, _ for what we have. Fight for a way for us to be together, no matter what. Because that’s what I’m going to do.”

His face falls in defeat. “Listen,” he says, taking her hands and holding them in his. “I love you, maybe more than life itself. You’re everything to me. And you’re right, I don’t feel that I deserve it. But I will  _ never  _ fight to take a mother away from her daughter, or a much needed doctor away from her people.” His eyes are dark with pain. “And if you don’t know that, then I guess you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

He places a kiss on her head and lets go of her hands, and she watches his retreating back with a sinking feeling in her stomach.

…………...

He stays out of her way for the rest of the day, and she gives him his space. She spends some time in the cryosuite with Clarke, voicing her thoughts aloud, even though of course Clarke can’t hear her. Afterwards she cleans up in the kitchen and empties the bathtub, because they’d left everything as it was after their date. She feels a twinge of nostalgia at the memory of the evening; it had been so romantic and fun, and it had filled her heart to make him so happy, and to give him these experiences he’s never had, but now everything feels a little tainted after their discussion. She finishes cleaning the tub and puts away the candles and what’s left of the bubble bath. Hopefully they’ll have a chance to use it again. 

By the time she goes back to their room it’s bedtime, and he’s already in bed. She undresses and slips under the covers next to him. 

“Hi,” she whispers, and he turns on his side to face her. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” He pulls her closer. “Better now you’re here.”

Her hand finds his cheek, caressing his beard with gentle fingers, and she draws him to her to kiss him. She’d meant to be tentative, loving, trying to heal the rift that has been between them all day, so he takes her by surprise when he responds enthusiastically, his tongue forcing her lips open and delving into her mouth. 

He kisses her greedily, possessively even, and she’s never seen him like this. His hand tangles in her hair, pulling almost painfully to keep her where he wants her so that his mouth and lips and tongue can devour hers, until she has to break away to breathe, and he moves his attention to her neck, his lips hungry on her skin. There’s a raw need about him that she’s never seen before, and a soft moan escapes her as his mouth finds her breast. She’s beginning to lose herself, his hands and mouth are everywhere but something is missing.  _ He’s  _ missing. 

“Marcus,” she whispers. “Marcus, stop. Look at me, please.”

He lifts his head to hers, and their eyes meet. 

“Hey,” she smiles. “Where are you?”

His eyes are deep and black, and she can see everything in them, the love and arousal but also fear and sorrow, and suddenly she understands. He’s trying to find  _ her.  _

“I’m right here,” she says, her hands on his face and in his hair and beard, thumbs sweeping across his cheeks and down to his lips, reassuring him of her presence. “I’m right here.”

The tension leaves his body, and his eyes soften and focus. She wraps her arms tightly around his neck and pulls him to her, and this time when he kisses her the need is gone, and he’s just Marcus again, the man who loves her and desires her with an intensity like fire.

He’s still hungry for her but he’s with her now, his eyes locked on hers as she takes him inside her, and everything else is wiped from her mind, the only thing that exists is him, his body warm and solid and heavy on top of her, filling her beautifully, reaching the spot that sends pleasure radiating through her body in wave after wave. He’s a little more forceful than usual, tonight he’s taking what he needs but without ever losing sight of her either. 

She can see him beginning to spiral towards his climax, his thrusts faster and more erratic, his breathing coming in heavy pants. “Look at me,” she commands, and he does, and the sight of him as he comes, beautiful as ever in his moment of ecstasy, is enough to send her over the edge too. 

Afterwards he stays inside her, his lips against her temple, his body deliciously heavy on top of her.

“I love you,” he whispers. “I love you so much.”

She strokes his hair, grateful he can’t see the tears glistening in her eyes. “I love you too,” she reassures him. “It’s gonna be okay.” 

……………

  
The next morning they prepare for Marcus’s spacewalk to bypass the damaged solar panels, which will stop the cryopods malfunctioning. Now that they’ve discovered the cause, and the potential risk, there’s no point delaying. 

“The damaged panels are part of a series of ten panels,” he explains. “From what we can see on the cameras, panels three and four are damaged, so I’ll have to unplug panel two from panel three and create a bypass straight to panel five using an extension cable.”

“Okay,” she nods. “How long will that take?” 

“Not more than a couple of minutes. And it’s twelve hundred metres from the airlock at Earth Monitoring, straight across to Tesla,” he calculates. “At a jetpack speed of four metres per second, it’ll take me five minutes to get there.”

“So far,” Abby mutters, feeling sick to her stomach. The spacewalk to Factory had been child’s play in comparison.

“I know. But I’ll have the jetpack. There’s no way I can get lost.”

“I know.” 

“Right, so after I’ve gone out of the airlock, you wait ten minutes to connect the battery. I’ll be there by then, and I’ll have the full eight minutes of battery power to disconnect the faulty panels and bypass them.”

“Okay. That sounds simple enough.” Simple if everything goes as it should. 

“You’ll know when mains power is back, because the lights will come back on, and you can disconnect the battery.”

“And if mains power doesn’t come back on before the battery dies there’s nothing I can do about it?”

“No,” he says. “But I won’t let that happen.”

She has to trust him, because otherwise there’s no point even trying.

An hour later Marcus is suited up and ready to go, a length of cable he’s going to use to create the bypass looped over his shoulder. They’ve wheeled the biggest battery they can find to the cryosuite, where Marcus removed the panel to the electric cupboard and showed Abby how to attach the battery terminals. She walks with him to the airlock, since she’ll have time to get back to the cryosuite. They each have digital stopwatches, which they’ll start at the same time.

“Start it as soon as you open the airlock doors,” he reminds her. “And then go straight to the cryosuite.” 

“Okay. Good luck.” She kisses him, trying to ignore her pounding heart and sweaty palms. 

“Twenty-three minutes,” he says. “And we’ll be standing here again, and we’ll have saved the human race.” He touches his forehead to hers, and gives her a last kiss before he moves away from her into the airlock, placing his helmet over his head. As the outside doors open she presses the button to start the stopwatch, and she doesn’t even wait to see him shoot off out into space before she turns and walks as quickly as she can back towards the cryosuite. 

……………..

Outside in the interminable blackness of space, Marcus shoots along, heading for Tesla station and the damaged solar panels. He can see them clearly, the side of the space station grotesquely deformed by the piece of satellite embedded in its side. He glances down at the stopwatch wrapped around his wrist, keeping an eye on the minutes passing. 

It takes him a few seconds more than he’d predicted to get to his destination but he’s already identified the cable that needs to be removed from panel three by the time the stopwatch shows six minutes; Abby will activate the battery at minute ten, so he has time to kill before he can interrupt mains power. He uses the time to steady his nerves. Marcus usually prides himself on his level-headedness but he can’t deny that his heart is racing at the thought that the fate of the whole human race is in his hands. 

The stopwatch reaches ten minutes. From this moment, he has eight minutes to complete the bypass while the cryosuite is being powered by the battery. He hangs onto the side of Tesla station, and tugs hard at the offending cable, trying to dislodge it from the socket on the faulty panel. The force he needs to pull it out sends him flying backwards away from the station, and he’s lucky he’s hanging on to the cable because he uses it to pull himself back towards the Ark. He’d rather save the power in the jet pack for the journey back. 

A glance at his wrist tells him two minutes of the eight have passed, but he’s making good time. He slips the coil of extension cable off his shoulder and attaches it to the loose cable, rendering it long enough to bypass the two faulty panels and reach the next functioning panel on the other side. It slips home easily, and he checks the time; just under five minutes, and the job is done. He breathes a sigh of relief. He’s about to set off back towards Alpha when he catches sight of something that makes his heart leap in his throat.

Panel five is also damaged. There is a crack all down its length; they’d obviously missed it on the cameras but it’s clearly visible to his naked eye. He lets out a loud expletive inside his helmet. The bypass he’s created is useless if there is still a faulty panel in the series.

Six minutes. He has two minutes of battery time left. Okay, all he has to do is unplug the extension cable from panel five and plug it into panel six. No problem. Except the damn cable doesn’t reach to panel six; he hadn’t been expecting to have to bypass  _ three _ panels.

He wants to cry. He tugs and tugs, but it’s an inch short. His eyes travel back along the cable to where it’s connected to panel two, and he notes with relief that it’s hooked awkwardly under the panel. If he frees it, it’ll reach the extra inch. 

He pulls himself back along the panels, unhooks the cable, and then moves back to plug it into panel six, but his hands are shaking so much he can’t get the plug into the socket. He takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself, and counts to three. It works. The plug slips in with twenty seconds to spare. He’s done it.

For a moment he just clings to the side of the space station, too shaken to even think straight, but slowly the blood stops pounding in his head. He needs to get back inside to Abby, she’ll be wondering where he is if stays out here any longer.

Five minutes later he’s landing in the airlock, and Abby is there to carry out the repressurization sequence and open the doors. He takes his helmet off and she runs into his arms, and together they sink to the floor, breathless and shaking with the stress of the last twenty minutes. 

“I thought I wasn’t going to make it,” he says. “There were three damaged panels, not two, and the cable was only just long enough.”

“Oh God.” She settles against him. “I was panicking, seeing the last seconds of battery power count down and the mains didn’t come back on. I think I aged ten years.”

He chuckles breathlessly, and kisses her head. “Same. We did it though.”

“Yeah. The cryosuite is safe now.” 

The weight of her words hangs in the air, but he purposely pretends he hasn’t understood. “For now. Who knows if more space debris will damage the Ark.”

She pulls away, and looks at him. “We should power up the external sensors, Marcus. It’s too risky, leaving the Ark defenceless to avoid collisions with debris.”

She’s right, of course she is, and anyway, electrical power is an unlimited resource thanks to the solar panels. “Okay, you’re right. As always.”

They sit in silence, lost in their thoughts. He wraps his arms more tightly around her. “We need to decide what to do about the cryopods,” he ventures after a few minutes. 

She immediately goes rigid in his arms. “No,” she says. “I don’t want to think about that. Please.”

“Abby…” 

“I said, no.”

He bites his tongue. She’s so stubborn, but he can’t deny that the force of her love for him fills his heart. She sits up and climbs into his lap, her thighs straddling his, and takes his face in his hands, her eyes soft and pleading.

“Let’s just live for today,” she says. “Today I’m happy. Aren’t you?”

“Of course,” he says, wondering that she really needs to ask. “Abby, you know I am.” 

“Good,” she murmurs as her mouth finds his. “That's all that matters.”

Today sounds good, he thinks, as he surrenders himself to her. Tomorrow is an abstract concept, something that slips out of reach with every step you take towards it. Today is tangible; it’s here and now. It’s her in his arms, loving him. It’s her laugh and her smile, her strength and her hope, her tenderness and her stubbornness. 

How can he say no, he wonders, as their kiss deepens into the kiss of two people whose bodies communicate better than words, when the future is made of todays like this?

  
  



	28. Chapter 28

Abby rifles through the boxes of pills on the shelf, searching for ones she needs. Her patient has a bad case of bronchitis and needs antibiotics. She finds the the correct box and turns to leave medical, but is brought up short by Kane standing in the doorway, holding his data pad and stylus as he does when something tragic has just happened, like he’s found a mistake in the inventory. 

“What do you want, Kane,” she sighs with a roll of her eyes. “I have patients to see.”

“Just a word, Abby.”

“Are you sick?”

“No.”

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to come back later. I’m busy.” It’s been a long day, and she hasn’t got the energy for his petty grievances. 

“It can’t wait, I’m afraid. Chancellor Jaha is expecting an answer.”

“About what?” Please don’t let there be a problem with the new batch of bandages she’d ordered. She can’t deal with  _ that  _ today. 

“The last order you placed wasn’t approved by the council.”

Dear God, it  _ is  _ the bandages. 

“Kane, they’re bandages. I’m trying to treat people for oxygen deprivation here. Don’t you think I have more important things on my mind?”

“Rules are rules, Abby. You know why the council has to approve all orders. Just because we’re in the middle of an emergency, we can’t let everything else slide –“

“In case you haven’t noticed,” she snaps. “I’m on the council too. And I think, given the state of emergency we’re in, I could be trusted this once to approve my own order. Or don’t you trust me, councillor?”

He shakes his head. “Abby, you just don’t get it –“

“Oh I think I do, Kane.” She walks closer to him, too close, and stares up at him. His eyes are as cold and black as space itself, but his breath hitches slightly at her proximity. “I think you just can’t resist coming here and making my life difficult. One could almost think you enjoy it.”

He’s silent, and a muscle twitches in his cheek. One glance at his face tells her that’s hit a bit close to home. 

“Well well well,” she smirks. “Was that a bit close for comfort?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbles. 

“Really, Kane? My doctor’s eye is  _ very  _ observant.” She reaches out a delicate finger and trails it along the length of his clearly visible erection. He flinches at her touch. 

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” She does it again, this time with the flat of her hand, and he jerks and gasps. 

“Abby…”

She smiles, bringing her finger and thumb to his zipper to lower it, and something snaps in him. Seizing her arms, he backs her roughly against the wall, his mouth crashing onto hers in a mess of teeth and tongues. She returns his kisses, fumbling to get his belt undone as he fumbles with hers, and when they are both free he hooks his hands under her thighs and lifts her, pinning her against the wall. His eyes are dangerously dark as he pushes inside her with a groan of pleasure. 

So he  _ does  _ want this, she thinks smugly. This is what he dreams about, when he’s alone in his quarters and he can forget the complicated construct of their relationship and just give in to his desire for her. 

It’s not like she’s never imagined it herself. 

His mouth devours her neck as he thrusts in and out, his frantic moans vibrating against her skin. She tips her head back and abandons herself to the sheer wanton pleasure of it. It feels so good just to let him take her like this, here in medical where anyone could walk in at any moment, but there’s no way she’s going to give him the satisfaction of coming before he does. She’s  _ not.  _

By the looks of things, that’s not going to be a problem. 

“Abby… oh God…”

She feels a vague sense of triumph as he gives a last few thrusts before he tenses and releases inside her with a shuddering groan. 

He draws back to look at her. “You didn’t come.” He pulls out of her and sinks to his knees in front of her. 

She smirks down at him. “Don’t think for a minute,” she whispers, “that you’re going to have the same effect on me.”

“We’ll see about that,” he growls, lifting her left leg, hooking it over his shoulder and then his mouth is on her and oh  _ God.  _

She’s  _ not  _ going to let him win, though. 

“You’ll never make me come,” she hisses as his tongue circles her clit and her legs go weak. 

“Shut up,” he growls against her sex. The vibrations send delicious waves through her, and her head starts to spin. 

“It’s true,” she says, trying not to pant. “I’m not even remotely – ohhh,  _ God!  _ – turned on right now.” 

In response his tongue picks up speed and it’s all she can do to clutch his hair and try not to cry out. She has a sudden image of herself, pressed against the wall, Marcus Kane’s head between her thighs, and oh fuck, it’s hot. 

“It doesn’t even feel good,” she moans, her hands guiding his head to get the exact pressure she needs. “Not in the slightest...” Her voice disappears in a shaky breath as her body betrays her words and erupts into a shuddering, trembling orgasm, his tonguing pressing every last pulse of pleasure from her. 

“Oh God,” she gasps as she sinks down, exhausted, onto his lap and his arms catch her. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses hot wet kisses to his mouth. “I hate you. I can’t believe you made me come. That’s extremely annoying.” 

He looks altogether too pleased with himself, which annoys her even more. How dare he be so good with his tongue? She kisses him roughly, almost punishingly, her hands tangling in his hair, but gradually the kiss slows and deepens into something softer, more affectionate, and when they pull apart they are grinning at each other stupidly, their noses millimetres apart. 

“That was fun,” she breathes. “It would have been great, wouldn’t it?” 

“It would have been amazing,” he says. “I don’t know why we never did it.”

They’ve done this many times over the last three months, ever since her suggestion that he find her in the bath and punish her. They’ve had discussions in the council chamber which led to frantic sex on the table, disagreements in the Earth Monitoring which ended with her winning him over by unzipping his pants and taking him in her mouth, and even an argument in the corridor which resulted in a makeout session and him fingering her to orgasm against the wall. All it takes is for one of them to say something like “We have a council meeting this evening, I’ll see you there,” for the other to know that that is an invitation to slip back into their pre-cryo personas and find any little thing they can to bicker about. Which is something they both find incredibly easy, and very enjoyable. 

“Come here.” She caresses his beard, and kisses him again. “I have to pretend you don’t have a beard,” she says. “But it’s easy as long as I concentrate on your eyes.”

“I could shave it off next time.”

“No,” she says. “Don’t. I love it too much.” 

He lies back on the floor, pulling her on top of him, and he’s already hard for her again so she slides onto him and they both let out little sighs. 

“This is always better, though, right?” 

“Always.” He pulls her down to kiss her, his tongue finding hers in a gentle caress, so different from the heated battle of before. “I love you like this.” His hands slip under her shirt to cup her breasts and she braces herself with her hands on his chest, her hair falling loosely around her face. 

“I love  _ us  _ like this,” she murmurs as she begins to move. They make love slowly, taking their time, and this time their orgasms are not explosive but long and deep and satisfying, slow waves of pleasure washing over them as they clutch each other tightly, identical moans escaping them. Afterwards she lies on his chest, listening to his heart beating and she’s so incredibly flaccid from two breathtaking orgasms that she feels like she’s floating. 

“Hmmmm,” she sighs contentedly. “I feel so good I feel like I’m floating.”

He’s silent for a long moment, and when he speaks his voice is not soft with bliss but low with an unexpected urgency. “Abby,” he says. “I hate to say it, but we are.”

“What?” She lifts her head to look around, and her stomach lurches. She can see the top of the table just behind his head. The  _ top.  _ “Marcus! What the hell?”

A further glance around tells her that they are indeed three feet off the floor, floating weightlessly in mid air. They look at each other in horror as the truth hits them like an escape pod gone rogue.

After everything they’ve been through, from failing CO2 scrubbers and malfunctioning cryopods, to her injured leg and the damaged solar panels, it appears that gravity is now failing on Alpha too. 

  
  
  
  
  



	29. Chapter 29

They cling to each other, suspended mid-air in medical, as reality sinks in. Medical equipment is hanging around them like celestial bodies; boxes of pills and bottles of medicine, syringes and scissors and scalpels. Once they are in a vertical position Marcus moves to grab their pants which are by the door. Abby’s brain suddenly goes into hysteria mode. Here they are hovering in the air in medical, both naked from the waist down, and the sight of Marcus’s now-limp but sizeable penis waving around freely strikes her as immensely comical, and she gives a manic giggle. 

Marcus glares at her as he hands her her clothes. “I don’t see what’s so funny, Abby. This is incredibly serious.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just hysteria.” She pulls her clothes on, trying to avert her eyes from his floating member lest the giggles take her again. “How can this be happening? There can’t be damage to Alpha station, the sensors and cameras are on. We’d have seen something.”

“I’m guessing there isn’t. If there was, the oxygen would have been sucked out, and we’d be dead already. It must be something else.”

“Great deduction,” she mutters as she pushes against a cabinet to send herself in the direction of the door. “Come on, let’s go to systems control.” She’s halfway there, when she suddenly plummets to the floor as the gravity kicks back in.

“Uff,” she groans, the wind knocked out of her. “That hurt.” She raises her head, surprised that Marcus hadn’t emitted a sound when he’d crashed to the floor. He’s lying next to the table, his eyes closed, and she notices with alarm that there’s a pool of blood seeping out from under his head. 

“Marcus!” He must have cracked his head on the table as he fell, and the way the gravity had kicked back in meant that they’d both hit the floor with something like double their own body weight. The impact of his head against the table could have fractured his skull, she thinks in panic. 

She leaps to her feet to run to him, or rather she tries to, but she feels like she’s moving in glue. Her limbs are like lead and even pushing herself to her knees requires a gargantuan effort that leaves her breathless and shaking. “What’s going on?” she moans. “I can’t move.”

She half drags herself, half crawls across the floor to him, and tries to turn him over, but his normal 170lb has become double that, and there’s no way she can move him. 

“Marcus! Wake up!” If he regains consciousness he can move himself, and she can get to the wound on his head. “Please, Marcus,” she pleads. ”I need you to wake up.” Her voice becomes a sob when he doesn’t respond. She gathers all the strength her lead-laden body can find, and with a loud groan she manages to push him over so that she can see the gash on his temple. Blood is pumping out of it at an alarming rate, sucked from his vein by the increased gravity. 

“Oh God,” she mutters. “Gauze. I need gauze.” She’s beginning to realise that she needs to move as little as possible in order not to exhaust herself, so she scans the room with her eyes and spots a packet of bandages about four feet away from her, just out of reach. It’s not perfect but it’ll do. She lies down on her tummy – that part is easy, her body wants nothing more than to be pressed against the floor, and stretches her arm out towards the bandages. She just manages to touch them with her fingertips, but as she tries to close her hand around them she only succeeds in pushing them further out of reach, and she swears under breath. Lifting herself onto her elbows, she wriggles forward until she can clasp her fingers around them, before collapsing back against the floor. 

She manages to get back to Marcus and tears open the packet, then folds the bandages onto a wad and presses it against his temple. He’s still unresponsive so she lies next to him and waits for him to wake up, hoping that whatever’s wrong with the gravity will sort itself out as quickly as possible. 

  
  


……………

  
  


Marcus wakes up with a throbbing head, and it feels like every bone in his body is broken.

“Abby?”

There are sounds of movements next to him, but she doesn’t appear in his line of vision for a good minute or so. 

“I’m here.” 

“What the hell happened?”

“The gravity came back with a vengeance,” she says. “It must be at least three G. I can hardly move. You hit your head on the corner of the table as you crashed to the ground. You’re bleeding.”

“It hurts a bit.” With an effort he touches his hand to his head. There’s a bandage there, attached roughly with some tape, which is caught in his hair and pulling uncomfortably. 

“Marcus,” she says, her voice strained with worry. “Do you think it’ll go back to normal?”

“I’m sure it will,” he says. “Let’s just wait a moment.” He opens his arm to signal to her to come closer, and she manages to wriggle until she can rest her head on his chest.

“Uff, no, Abby,” he groans. “You’re so heavy, I can’t breathe.”

“Sorry.” She moves her head to the floor next to him, and her hand reaches for his, their fingers intertwining. It’s cold on the floor, though, and the fact that they are almost paralysed doesn’t help to keep their body temperatures up. “I knew it was too good to be true,” she says glumly. “Three months with no problems or stress? This damn wreck of an Ark had to put a stop to _that,_ didn’t it.”

The bitterness in her voice saddens him, and he turns his head to look at her. “Hey. It may be nothing. Let’s not think the worst yet.”

“What if it doesn’t go back to normal? How are we supposed to live like this?” 

“Abby –“ It’s unlike her to be so pessimistic, and he feels himself flailing. She’s only human, though, and everyone is allowed their moments of despair. “We’ll sort it out.”

She lets out a deep sigh, and he wracks his brains, trying to think of something positive, something to cheer her up. “We managed to stop the cryosuite malfunctioning, _and_ adapt the circuit boards for our cryopods. We can sort this out too.” She doesn’t look convinced, so he tries something more lighthearted. “And at least it’s not as bad as my attempt at making bubble bath.”

The little giggle she gives lifts his spirits. “That’s true.”

He’d wanted to surprise her with a relaxing bath one evening when she’d been complaining of a sore neck and shoulders after heaving boxes in the store room all day. Unfortunately his concoction had made the water slowly turn to sludge as it cooled, and had also left their skin with a faint green tinge for a few days afterwards. After that Abby had banned him from chemistry experiments, fearing an even bigger disaster if he ever got his hands on some of the more volatile solutions she had in her medicine cabinet. 

“I still have green toenails,” he chuckles, and she screws her face up in disgust. 

“Worst experience of my life,” she says, although of course they both know it’s hyperbole. 

“Oh, hey. It wasn’t that bad in the beginning.” He grins at the memory. “And whilst we’re on the subject of disasters, what about your algae bread?”

She scowls. “You know we don’t talk about that.”

“Right. You’re never going to let me forget the sludge bath, but I have to forgive you for the worst forty-eight hours of diarrhoea I’ve _ever_ had in my life –“

“It was your own fault. I told you the levitation wasn’t complete, but no, your belly is bigger than your brain –“

Her selective memory is unbelievable. “If I remember rightly, your exact words were, “It’s probably okay, why don’t you try it.” 

“I may have been a little premature,” she mutters. “But anyway, you had the constant care of the best doctor on the Ark for the whole time, it can’t have been that bad.”

“I wanted to die.”

“Men,” she says, attempting to shake her head and grimacing as she nearly dislocates a vertebrae or two. “A bit of tummy ache and it’s the end of the world.”

They both sober at her last words, which are always a bit too close to home and are not normally used lightheartedly by people on the Ark.

“It’s been a good three months, though, hasn’t it?” Her voice is soft as her eyes meet his. 

“The best,” he whispers, noting with a pang that her eyes are sparkling with tears.

“I don’t want it to end.”

“It won’t. We’re still here.”

She says nothing as a tear slides down her nose, and he can’t even move his hand in time to wipe it away. He’s more worried than he’s letting on, and his sense of unease is building with every minute that this ridiculous state of gravity persists. She’s shivering, so gathers all of his strength and heaves himself onto his side. “Come here.” 

She turns too, with difficulty, but finally they are facing each other, and he lifts her chin to kiss her. He can’t hug her, because the weight of his arms will suffocate her, so he’s going to have to find other ways of making her temperature rise. Kissing seems like a good option. 

Kissing is _always_ a good option, he thinks, as their tongues glide together and she lets out that little moan of content that makes his skin tingle with goosebumps. Fortunately, the pleasurable pastime only lasts a few minutes before there’s a discernible tremor deep underneath them and the pressure on them begins to ease. 

“At last!” He sits up and pulls her up too, and they wiggle their legs and shake their hands, trying to bring feeling back to them after lying still on the cold floor for so long. He stands and pulls her to her feet, and they head out of medical towards systems control. 

  
  


……………

  
  


An hour in systems control tells them little. 

“The only thing I can think of,” says Marcus thoughtfully, “is that the Ark is trying to compensate for the gravity problem on the other stations. In some way it’s sensing when the gravity fails there, and ups the gravity here to try to compensate.”

“But how would it know? Because we powered up the sensors?”

“Maybe. But it’s too risky to disable them, Abby. The whole gravity problem is because Tesla got damaged by the satellite, and that only happened because the sensors were disabled.”

“It’s a no-win situation. Sensors on or sensors off, we’re fucked.” She pinches her nose, and he rubs her back, not wanting her to slip into despair again. 

“We don’t know that. It may have just been a one-off systems glitch. It may never happen again.”

“Do you think the cryosuite was affected?”

“I don’t think so, but I guess we should go and check everything is okay.”

  
  


…………...

  
  


The second time it happens, a week or so later, it really _is_ one of the worst experiences of Marcus’s life. They’ve just had a late siesta, after some lazy afternoon sex, and Abby has gone to fix them some dinner. He’s lying in bed, warm and content and with no desire to move, but he can’t ignore the fact that his bladder is full and he’s going to have to get up and use the bathroom. 

He relieves himself with a blissful sigh, but the bliss is short-lived. He watches in dismay as the stream of urine no longer hits the bottom of the toilet, but meanders up into the air in a golden swirl and breaks into tiny balls.

“No no no no,” he moans in disbelief. “Not now.” He tries desperately to stem the flow, but of course it’s almost impossible to stop mid-urination and soon the air is full of globules of urine of varying sizes. As the gravity decreases even further he himself floats upwards, to his horror heading straight for the balls of urine which would be pretty if they weren’t so utterly gross, and then with a _slam!_ the gravity switches to three G and he crashes painfully to the floor. 

The last thing he sees before he screws his eyes shut tightly is dozens of tiny balls of urine heading straight for his face. 

  
  
…………….

  
  


Abby, on her way back from the mess with a tray of food, doesn’t fare much better. First the soup floats out of the bowls and then the bowls float off the tray. She herself spends a giddy few minutes in the air before being pulled back down to the floor with a thump. The bowls hit the floor around her with a clatter and a pain shoots through her bad leg as she lands on it awkwardly. She curses loudly, waiting for the gravity to return to normal so that she can get back to Marcus. He should be okay, she thinks. He was in bed, so he’ll have had a softer landing than her. The thought eases her mind, and she waits patiently on the floor of the corridor.

When she finally hobbles back to their room, after twenty minutes pinned to the floor, she finds Marcus furious and with a peculiar dampness about him.

“Are you okay?” he asks, his eyes immediately filling with worry on seeing her limp.

“I’m fine. I hurt my leg a bit, and the soup ended up all over the floor. What happened to you?” She wrinkles her nose at the somewhat acrid smell emanating from him. 

“Don’t even ask,” he groans. “I need to take a shower.” 

…………….

The situation deteriorates over the following weeks. The shifts in gravity happen more and more frequently, and last for longer each time. Abby is beginning to dread the light-weighted feeling that precedes the spell of three G gravity. Her leg is still far from strong, and every time she plummets to the ground it’s agony, and she wouldn’t be able to move anyway even if she weren’t immobilised by a force three times her body weight. The only good news is that the shifts don’t have any effect on the cryosuite, so whilst they are extremely uncomfortable and inconvenient, they don’t pose a threat to the safety of their people. 

One morning they’re working in Earth monitoring when it happens, and although they’ve both learned to hang on to something which is anchored, so that they don’t have so far to fall, it’s still painful when they end up on the floor, winded and gasping to get air into their lungs.

Marcus is ten feet away from her, but with difficulty they manage to wriggle until their hands meet, and she clings to him as she bites back the tears of pain.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” she moans. “How are we supposed to live like this?”

“We can’t,” he says. “This isn’t a life.”

“So what do we do?”

He says nothing, and she concentrates on trying to quell the panic inside her. It’s difficult enough to breathe without a panic attack making things worse. When he finally speaks, it’s the absolute last thing she wants to hear. 

“Abby, your cryopod is working perfectly. You should go back into cryo whilst I try to solve the gravity problem. Once the problem is solved I’ll wake you up again.”

“What? No!” Not this again. “I’ve already told you that’s out of the question.”

“I just want you to be safe, and you’re not here. You could end up being crushed under something, or impaled on something. And your leg is getting worse. You could end up with permanent nerve damage at this rate.”

“You’re crazy. You think I can just go back into cryo and leave you to face this alone?” She can’t believe he’s even suggesting this. Anger forms in her chest and hot tears prick at her eyes. 

“It would be instantaneous for you. You would go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow and the gravity problem wouldn’t exist anymore, even if it takes me a year. Or two.”

“But that’s still a year or two that you’re here alone. And what if you can’t fix it?”

“There has to be a way.”

She wonders how many more times the conviction that there has to be a way will actually lead to finding a way. A silences falls between them as an idea forms in her mind. “I have another idea.”

He sighs. “Tell me.”

“We could go back to Mecha and look for the sensor your pod is missing. Then we can both go back into cryo.”

He shakes his head. “You’re forgetting that the sensor is an inch and a half long, and there’s no gravity on Mecha Station either. Everything will be flying around in the air. It will be impossible to find it.”

“Not impossible, just time consuming.”

He’s contemplating her answer but she can already see he doesn’t like it. Of course he doesn’t. 

“I don’t want to spend that much time and energy just trying to save my own sorry ass. The gravity problem is much more pressing.” 

She can’t even smile at his pun. “I happen to be rather fond of your sorry ass, in case you haven’t noticed,” she says, blinking away the tears. 

He huffs a sad laugh. “If I know you’re safe, I can concentrate on fixing the problem. And if anything happens to me, I’ll know you’re ok, that you’ll go to the ground, and you’ll be with Clarke. My worst nightmare is leaving you here alone.”

She nods slowly. She can understand that, she remembers having the same feelings the first time they did the spacewalk. She’d been more scared of leaving him alone than of dying herself. But still, it seems so final…. “Will you wake me up anyway, even if you don’t fix the problem?”

“I’ll fix it,” he says. “I promise. And we’ll be together again.” 

There are tears in his eyes too, and she wonders how much he himself truly believes it. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	30. Chapter 30

Deep down, he supposes, he’s always known it was going to come to this. In his mind, he’s never been able to conceive of the idea that she could stay with him, that they’d spend the rest of their lives here together, no matter how many times whispered promises of forever had fallen from their lips. And it’s not even a question of what he feels he deserves, because he doesn’t truly believe he deserves to die alone either, but Abby carries a light inside her which is too warm and too bright to die alone with him on a dark and empty space station.

They spend their last night making memories that will last them forever if they have to. He wants to remember every tiny detail about her, every line on her face, every fleck in the warm brown of her eyes. He kisses every part of her, breathing in the scent of her skin, impressing on his brain the feel of her mouth and nose and cheekbones beneath his lips. They talk and talk, and he memorises each word she says, the way her voice breaks when she says his name, the feel of her hand on his face as her love tumbles from her lips in velvety soft words that make his heart soar and shatter at the same time. 

Her heart is breaking too, he can feel it in the way she holds him a little too tightly, in the way her eyes are always slightly shiny and her voice is a little shakier than usual. He can see she’s holding on to her hope more tightly than ever, though, and he takes strength from this. He always does. 

They make love over and over, even when they are too exhausted to come anymore, but just want to stay connected in the most intimate way possible. They cry a little and they laugh a lot, remembering the good times, celebrating this happiness that flourished out of nothing. Sometimes they just lie in silence in each other’s arms, because there is nothing more to say that can make this any better. 

When morning comes they shower together for the last time. There’s something symbolic in the gentle way he soaps her hair and she washes his back, after the way their journey together had begun, with him putting her under the shower to rouse her from her bed. He’s suddenly overwhelmed with grief at the memory and he turns away from her, not wanting her to see his sadness.

“Marcus…” She takes a towel and dries his back, then turns him to her. She pats his chest and arms dry and he stares down at her, letting her care for him, too numb to even speak. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” she whispers, running her towel-covered hands over his hair and beard. “You’ll fix it, and you’ll wake me up again. This isn’t the end.”

He nods wordlessly. They have to believe that. 

She’s silent as they make their way to the cryosuite, her hand in his, her face curiously devoid of emotion. He’s pretty sure she’s just numb too. It feels like the gravity is going at any moment, but it’s just the sense of surrealism that is engulfing him. Next to her cryopod he holds her for a long time, delaying the moment she has to go till the last. 

“Who would have thought,” she says, her tears wetting his neck, “that ‘a whole new kind of hell’ would turn out to be a whole new kind of happiness?”

He tightens his arms around her, pulling her closer into him. “I know,” he mumbles into her hair. “The happiness you’ve given me is enough to last me a lifetime.” 

“It won’t have to,” she whispers. “We’ll be together again. We will.” 

She moves away, ready to get into the cryopod but he isn’t ready to let her go yet and he pulls her back for a last long slow kiss, and he’s glad he does because he knows immediately that this will be the kiss he remembers during the long and empty days to come. The kiss embodies her so perfectly; fiercely tender, but at the same time so hopeful and loving. When they break apart they stay forehead to forehead, neither wanting to take the next step, until reluctantly he releases her and she climbs into the cryopod.

“I love you.” He wipes away her tears with his thumb and takes one last long look at her, basking in the love in her eyes before she’s frozen and emotionless again. “More than I ever thought I could love anyone.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, because her face crumples. “Marcus…. wait. Not yet. I’m not ready.” She climbs out of the pod and flies into his arms again, and they cling to each other. “I love you,” she breathes. “I love you I love you I love you.”

“I know. I love you too. So, so much.” He squeezes his eyes closed. This is torture, this interminable delaying, and he almost needs to just get it over and done with.

She senses this, and she takes a deep breath and lies down again. Her eyes never leave his, and he can see all her hope and strength reflected in them despite the shimmer of tears.

“May we meet again.” His voice is hoarse but the familiar words anchor him, give him something to hold on to. 

“No,” she says softly, reaching to cup his cheek with her left hand, an unexpectedly peaceful look on her countenance. “Not _may_ we meet again. We _will_ meet again.”

She’s lightning fast, he’ll give her that. He barely has time to register her words before there’s a piercing pain in his neck, and everything goes black. 

……………

  
  


Abby gives out a grunt as Marcus crashes on top of her, knocking the wind out of her. He’s a dead weight unconscious, and it’s all she can do to lift his body slightly so that she can wriggle out from underneath him. _Please don’t let the three G gravity kick in now,_ she pleads. His weight on top of her will crush her to death. Luckily fate is on her side, and she’s able to extricate herself without pushing him to the floor. 

Once she’s free she lifts his legs and heaves him into the cryopod, and then turns him over so that he’s on his back. Leaning over him, she presses her lips to his forehead.

“Forgive me,” she whispers, caressing his beard, hoping in some way he can hear her. “But I told you I’d fight for us. There’s no way I’m going back into cryo without you.” She places another soft kiss on his lips, trailing her thumb down his cheek. He looks so peaceful, the sadness and pain gone from his face, that she’s immediately convinced she’s made the right decision. She steps back, and presses the button to close the cryopod, then activates it in the same way she had Clarke’s. The glass frosts over as the pod freezes. 

When she’s satisfied there are icicles on his beard and the pod is stable, she turns and hurries out of the cryosuite towards the airlock, only one thought on her mind; Mecha station, and the sensor to fix the other cryopod. 

Fuck this stupid space station and its inexplicable gravity problem. They’re going to Earth. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	31. Chapter 31

Abby works tirelessly on Mecha station. She spends the full eight hours the oxygen bottles allow her each time she goes, searching methodically through the floating items in the store. It’s chaos, as Marcus had predicted, but she starts on the first day by collecting all the big items and moving them to another room, and gradually works her way down until only the small items remain. There are hundreds, but she has time, and anyway, she’s safer here on Mecha where there’s no gravity at all than on Alpha with its weird gravity shifts. Her leg hurts less here due to her weightlessness, and it’s a relief not to be pinned to the floor three times a day. 

When she’s back on Alpha she doesn’t move from her bed. That way, she’s crushed against something soft during the spells of three G gravity, and doesn’t get hurt. She has food there, and water in the bathroom. She doesn’t even risk going to the cryosuite to see Marcus. She doesn’t need to. He’s on her mind constantly, the thought of being with him again driving her to keep going. When exhaustion and despair cloud her mind and fill her with self-doubt, the vision of him getting to see Earth is the light at the end of the tunnel.

At night the loneliness is crushing. She misses him in bed with her, his warm and solid presence, his gentle snores, his wandering hands which are always seeking her out, reaching for her, reassuring both of them that they’re not alone. The continual silence is unnerving, and she wonders how on earth he’d survived alone for thirteen months. In the end she resorts to talking aloud to him, telling him about her day, because even the sound of her own voice is comforting, and she knows him so well that if she closes her eyes and pictures his face she can see exactly how he’d be responding to her; eyes intense and brow furrowed as he listens to her account of how the interior airlock doors got jammed on her return to Alpha, a smile of amusement on his lips as she tells him how she hangs upside down on Mecha to sort through the floating boxes of parts. She sleeps clutching one of his shirts, and her dreams are filled with turbulent images of their time together, sometimes warm and passionate, others light and fun, and occasionally intense and sad, but always and exclusively him. 

It takes her thirty days to find the part. Twice, she thinks she’s found it only to get back to Alpha and find it’s not the right thing, but the third time she gets lucky. She wants to cry as she fits the sensor into Marcus’s old cryopod - he’s in hers now, of course - and the cryopod freezes. She monitors it for three days, but it stays frozen. She’s so happy she contemplates waking Marcus up to tell him the good news, but decides against it. He’ll probably be mad at her for what she did, and anyway, he’ll _still_ want to solve the gravity problem before he goes back into cryo again, because that’s the sort of person he is. No, she thinks. It’s better that she just goes back into cryo herself, and in an instant fifty years will have passed, and it’ll be time to go to Earth. 

On the fourth day she’s confident enough that the pod is fully functional, and she’s ready to go back into cryo. She’s beside herself with joy, and she’d probably jump up and down a little if it wasn’t for the fact that Alpha experiences the longest spell of three G gravity yet, and she spends twelve hours on the bedroom floor, not even able to make it to the bed. 

As soon as it lifts, she gets up and heads towards the cryosuite. She’s not spending another moment awake on this cursed space station. Her head is full of thoughts of the future as she makes her way along the corridor. She’s going to see Marcus again, and Clarke, and Callie, and tears of relief and happiness form in her eyes. Everything’s going to be okay. 

She feels, rather than sees the movement to her left, and then something hard strikes the back of her head, and she crashes to the floor. 

…………..

The next time she opens her eyes, she doesn’t recognise where she is. 

She’s lying on a bed in a medical bay, but it’s not the medical bay where she’s spent all her working life on the Ark. It’s cleaner and shinier and brighter. Next to her banks of screens blink and flicker. She’s never seen anything like it, the technology is far superior to anything they have on the Ark. 

Her head hurts. She raises her hand to touch it, but her wrist meets with a restraint and she glances down in surprise. She’s tied to the bed, metal clamps holding her hands securely in place by her side. What the hell? Since when did patients need to be tied to beds?

Panic surges through her. She has no idea where she is, and for someone who has spent all her life on the Ark, this is terrifying. Moreover, she’s completely helpless, a prisoner. Her blood runs cold as she examines the possibilities of exactly _whose_ prisoner she is. As far as they know, they are all that’s left of the human race, which means they’ve either been wrong all this time, or she’s been abducted by aliens. 

She doesn’t know which thought scares her more, but there’s only one way to find out. 

“Hello?” Her voice echoes around the med bay. “Is anybody there?”

There’s the scraping of a chair against the metal floor, and then footsteps. She braces herself, slightly consoled by the fact that even if they are aliens, they’re aliens that sit on chairs and walk on legs. However, the figure that appears from behind the screens is decidedly human.

And female.

Abby observes the woman warily as she crosses the room. Her brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail, her eyes icy blue. Her expression is empty, with no trace of the empathy or compassion typical of people who usually work in med bays. She approaches Abby’s bed, and pulls out a stool. Abby weighs her up, her expression defiant despite the fact the other woman clearly has the upper hand.

“You’re awake.” Her voice is deep and smooth. 

“Where am I? And who the hell are you?”

The woman shakes her head, a trace of a sneer on her lips. “All in good time. First, why don’t you tell me your name?”

Abby clamps her mouth shut. She’s not saying anything until she gets some answers.

“Fine. If that’s the way you want to play it.”

“This is not the way I want to play anything. You were the one who whacked me over the head and abducted me.”

The woman shrugs. “My henchman is a bit heavy-handed. I apologise.”

Abby narrows her eyes. “Apology accepted. Now, why don’t _you_ tell me what you want from me? Why am I restrained?” She needs to know what the woman wants, so that she’ll be in a better position to bargain for her freedom.

The other woman purses her lips. “Okay. We need a doctor. Because unfortunately, our own doctor ended up slightly dead in a recent uprising. So if you just tell me the name of yours, we’ll wake them up from cryo and be on our way.”

Abby’s heart pounds in her chest. They killed their own doctor? What sort of people kill the one person who can save their lives? Thank God she hadn’t told her her name, because she almost certainly would have said ‘Doctor Abigail Griffin.” There’s no way she’s going with these murderous people, she wants to go back into cryo, and go to the ground with Marcus and her daughter. She breathes deeply through her nose, thinking on her feet. Well, on her back.

“I don’t remember the name of the doctor,” she says. “I was just a cleaner on Factory station. Went to the doctor twice in my life, if that. And it was a different doctor each time.” She’s lying through her teeth, but there’s no way this woman can know what life was really like on the Ark.

“Hmmm. Convenient.” The piercing blue eyes are intelligent but unreadable. “Okay, let’s talk about something else. Tell me what you know about how the world ended.”

 _She doesn’t know anything,_ Abby thinks. Where do these people come from? How have they survived two apocalypses? She decides to play along. “Which time?” she asks with a smirk. 

“It ended more than once?”

“The first time a nuclear war broke out. That was just over a century ago. The second time was five years ago. Dunno what happened, we just saw it burning one day.” She’s deliberately trying to sound like she doesn’t know anything, hoping the woman will just give up. Truth is, though, she doesn’t actually know any more than she’s saying. They still have no idea why the world burned, that day Ridley attacked her on Mecha Station. “It was like a wave of fire, destroying everything in its path.”

A distant look crosses the woman’s face. “A wave, huh? That might explain how the valley survived.”

“The valley? You mean on _Earth?”_

“Not many valleys here in space.”

Abby ignores the woman’s sarcasm. “You mean – you’ve been to the ground?” She can hardly believe what she’s hearing. Earth shouldn’t be survivable for another forty years at least, the radiation levels are still too high now.

“Of course. I was there yesterday.”

“But - that’s not possible. How can you survive that kind of radiation? We predicted it would take at least half a century for the levels to drop enough to be compatible with human survival.”

“Well, your predictions were wrong,” says the other woman, standing up and preparing to leave. “We’ve been down there for a week, and none of us are dead yet.”

…………….

The news is overwhelming. There are other survivors, besides the inhabitants of the Ark. Earth is survivable, these people have been down there and haven’t died from radiation sickness. One question swirls in her head, chasing itself round in circles as she struggles to find a logical answer.

 _How?_ How have they survived the radiation? And does that mean the people of the Ark can survive the radiation too?

The question leads to an even more groundbreaking thought. If they can, it means they can go to Earth _now._ They don’t need to wait forty years. She can wake Marcus up, and Clarke and Callie and –

The euphoria of the realisation is immediately overcome with a rush of anger and frustration. She can’t do anything while she’s tied to this bed, and she’s not even on the Ark anymore. What is this ship? Why are they holding her prisoner? Who are these people who boarded the Ark, knocked her out and are now holding her hostage until she hands over their doctor to them? They clearly aren’t pleasant people, and her chances of building a relationship of trust with them seem slim at best. 

The woman returns, and this time she’s holding a curious object, a round collar-like device which she fits around Abby’s neck. 

“What the hell is this? You don’t need to put a collar on me as well, I’m already tied to the bed.”

“Oh no,” says the woman with a humourless smile. “This isn’t to stop you running away. It’s to make you talk.”

“I’m not talking,” says Abby, “until you tell me who you are and where you come from.”

“We’ll see about that.” The woman’s eyes are steely as she picks up another device, and Abby watches in horror as her fingers close over a small lever, and push it slowly away from her. 

Abby screams and arches off the bed as shock after shock of electric current course through her body, making her muscles spasm and her skin burn like fire. It lasts only a few seconds but it’s enough to leave her gasping and weak, her head spinning and her body tingling. 

“Now do you want to tell us the name of your doctor?”

She closes her eyes, trying to catch her breath, her neck stinging with pain. How can she tell them she’s their doctor? Or give them Jackson’s name? Jackson is like a son to her, she can’t hand him over to these people, and if they take her with them she’ll never see Marcus or Clarke again. 

“Silvia Conway,” she blurts out, hoping desperately that there’s no one of that name on the Ark. She doesn’t think so, it’s the name of a character from a movie she and Marcus had watched together, but it’ll buy her some time if it looks like she’s cooperating. “Dr Conway is the head of medical.”

The woman nods, satisfied. “See? It wasn’t so difficult. It’s amazing what a little – jolt can do.”

“You could have killed me,” Abby hisses furiously. “What have I ever done to you?”

The woman doesn’t answer, just turns and picks up a radio lying on the desk. “Tell Shaw to hack the system on the space station,” she says into it, her eyes never leaving Abby’s. “We’re looking for a Dr Silvia Conway. Find her cryopod, and wake her up.”

……………

They don’t find Silvia Conway, of course, because she doesn’t exist. Abby decides she’s going to play it dumb again, and give them another fictitious name, with the excuse that she got confused. She braces herself for another electric shock, because the woman is livid when she realises Abby gave her a false name, and it’s worse this time, longer and more violent, and she vomits onto the floor when it’s over. 

She struggles to get her breath back, tears streaming down her face, and she’s unable to even wipe the vomit from her chin because her hands are still tied. She’s barely aware of the radio crackling to life and a male voice coming over the waves.

“We found the doctor, Diyoza. The system lists all the inhabitants of the station with their job titles. Head of medical is a Doctor Abigail Griffin.”

“Good work,” says Diyoza with a smirk of satisfaction in Abby’s direction. “Wake her up.”

“There’s just one problem,” the voice returns. “We’ve found her cryopod, but there’s a guy in it.”

“Are you sure?”

“He has a beard.”

An expression of stony rage crosses Diyoza’s face. “Leave him for now,” she spits into the radio. “We don’t need more useless people awake.”

“Too late,” came the voice over the radio. “McCreary‘s already defrosting the pod.”

“Nooooooooo!” The desperate cry is ripped involuntarily from Abby’s throat, but the woman reaches for the collar remote to silence her and Abby shuts her mouth, a sob welling in her throat. She doesn’t know if she can stand another collar shocking so soon, her heart won’t take it. She squeezes her eyes closed. They’re going to wake up Marcus, and judging by the way they’ve treated her, he’s not likely to fare much better. 

“Bring him over here,” barks Diyoza into the radio. “Maybe we can get some sense out of him. I’ll meet you at the airlock.” She slams the radio down, and turns to leave. 

“Wait!! I’ll talk!” Abby says, straining to sit up. “Don’t go!” If she turns herself in, maybe they’ll spare Marcus the shock collar at least, and she can bargain with them for his life, for him to come with them.

“Later.” Diyoza waves a hand dismissively at her.

“Don’t hurt him! Please! I’m the doctor! I’m Abby Griffin!”

Her cries fall on deaf ears, though, because Diyoza has gone, and she’s left alone in the medical bay. She lies back and tries to stem the panic. She has to keep a clear head, but the electric shocks have left her mind foggy and her body aching. The stink of her own vomit on the floor makes her dry heave again. 

She closes her eyes, and tears form behind her eyelids. After everything they’ve been through, this can’t be how she’s going to lose him. She tries to focus on the positive. Marcus is awake, and on this ship with her. If she can get to him, they can formulate a plan together. Maybe they’ll bring him here. Her heart lurches as she remembers the sedative she’d given him. He won’t wake up for an hour or so, even when he’s out of cryo. She’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not. 

Her eyes are startled open when the radio on the desk crackles to life, and Diyoza’s tinny voice fills the room. 

“Vinson, come to the brig. I have a new prisoner for you to take care of.”

Oh God. They’re taking Marcus to the brig. All she can do is hope that whoever this Vinson is, he’s a little less heavy-handed than his boss.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	32. Chapter 32

As a guard on the Ark, Marcus had spent a lot of time in the skybox, and if there’s one thing he’s sure of at this moment it’s that the prison cell he’s currently being held in is not one of the many he’d stood guard outside in the early years of his career. This one is bigger, and darker. He can barely make out the outline of the door on the wall opposite him, and the windows are three small squares high up on the wall behind his head. No, this cell definitely isn’t in the skybox, or on any other part of the Ark to his knowledge, and anyway, the air is breathable, so he can’t be on any of the Ark’s currently uninhabited stations. What he doesn’t understand is where it is, and what he’s doing here. Or more importantly, how he got here. His wrists are sore from the handcuffs and his back is aching where he’s slumped awkwardly against the wall. Moreover, he has a strange rigid collar around his neck which is digging in uncomfortably.

The worst thing is that not only does he not know  _ where  _ he is, he also has no idea  _ when  _ he is. He’s pretty sure, from the bitter taste in his mouth and the familiar dehydration headache, that he’s been in cryo, but for how long? The last thing he remembers is kissing Abby next to her cryopod, his heart aching as she prepared to go back into cryo, and then  _ nothing.  _ Total blackness. 

_ Abby _ . What had she done? She must have sedated him - he has a vague memory of a pain in his neck - and put him into cryo, but why? His heart begins to race. Where is she? If he’s been in cryo for forty years she could be long dead by now. Panic forms in his chest, and his throat aches.  _ What did you do, you reckless, headstrong woman?  _ He’s torn between absolute mind-numbing grief that he might have lost her forever, and a quiet seething rage at how ridiculously fucking  _ stupid  _ she had been, together with a tiny bit of hurt that she’d deceived him like that and a not insignificant dose of pride in her determination. 

He shifts his weight, because his butt is numb from sitting on the cold hard floor, and lets out a low anguished groan. A stirring from the other side of the cell makes his heart leap. 

He’s not alone. 

……………

In the med bay, Abby is going out of her mind. She’s been alone for hours now, and her mind is filled with images of what they’re doing to Marcus. She closes her eyes and counts slowly, trying to calm the panic. Panicking won’t solve anything, not while she’s here tied to the bed. 

She’s gotten to two thousand and seventy-two when the door opens, and Diyoza comes in. She’s looking a bit peaky, and in her fear Abby’s mind immediately goes to the worst. What have they done to Marcus? Something so terrible it makes even this hardened woman feel sick? 

“What have you done to him?” Her voice is raw with panic. 

Diyoza doesn’t look at her, doesn’t even acknowledge her. She sits at the desk and types something on the built-in keyboard. 

“He doesn’t deserve this! He’s a good man. What the hell is wrong with you people?”

Diyoza turns to look at her, her eyes perceptive. “He’s obviously someone you care about. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll shut up and do as you’re told.”

Abby closes her mouth but she’s shaking with anger and panic. She breathes deeply. observing her in silence, trying to glean as much information as she can about this woman. She watches as she studies the screen, noticing the way her eyes flick along the lines and her fingernails tap gratingly on the metal console. Every so often she stops to bring the hand to her abdomen in an unmistakably protective gesture that Abby’s trained eye immediately recognises. When she’s finished reading, she puts her hands on the small of her back and stretches, and Abby’s suspicions are confirmed by the slightly swollen round belly which is immediately noticeable. 

The radio crackles with static, and a smooth and pleasant voice comes over the airwaves. Too smooth and pleasant for these people, she thinks. 

“The prisoner didn’t want to talk, so he has been taken care of,” the voice says, and dread floods her veins.  _ No no no.  _

“Thank you, Vinson,” says Diyoza drily. “Good work.”

“No.” Abby shakes her head, her eyes filling with hot tears. “No! What have you done? He was innocent!”

“And also superfluous.” 

“You could have just put him back into cryo!” Her voice cracks and tears spill down her cheeks, and her heart feels like it’s going to break in her chest. After everything she’s done to save him, losing him this way is just too cruel to contemplate. 

Diyoza turns cold eyes to her. “You seem to be mistaking me for someone who cares.”

Abby glares at her, her chest heaving with rage, and if looks could kill Diyoza would be dead. She’s somewhat shocked, then, when the other woman’s face creases suddenly in pain. She seems to hold her breath for a second, before letting it out slowly. Abby feels a faint sense of satisfaction that the woman is suffering. She closes her eyes, blocking her out, her grief for Marcus making her numb to anything else. 

She’s vaguely aware of Diyoza moving around medical, and occasional gasps of pain fill the air. She’s glad. Let her suffer, she thinks. 

She lies in stony silence, wishing Diyoza would go away so that she could really break down and cry. She doesn’t want to show how devastated she is, so she uses a compartmentalisation technique to deal with her grief temporarily. She places Marcus, and all her love and memories of him, her hopes and dreams of a life together, carefully in a special box inside her mind, and closes the lid. When she opens her eyes again, she feels empty, but there are no painful memories or dashed hopes causing her heart to break into a thousand pieces. She’s existing only in this moment, and it’s then that she remembers her earlier observations. Diyoza might be a cruel and sadistic murderer, but as a doctor, Abby can’t ignore the innocent life growing inside her. 

Diyoza gets up and walks towards the door, but stops halfway, doubled over in pain, gasping. Abby can’t see her face because her back is to her. 

“You can tell yourself it’s just Braxton Hicks, you know,” she says coldly. “But it might be something more serious.”

Diyoza turns. “What do you mean?”

“The contractions.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Abby recognises a kindred stubborn soul. “Have you been getting them a lot? You should take it easy. All this torture and murder could be harming your child. Or do you not care about that either?”

Diyoza turns, and approaches the bed. “And how does a factory cleaner get to be an expert on such matters?”

Abby thinks inwardly that any woman who has given birth knows these things, but she doesn’t want to reveal that she has a daughter yet. She doesn’t want to give Diyoza another bargaining tool. “I told you, before you left,” she spits. “I’m the doctor. I’m Dr Abigail Griffin. And I can recognise a pregnant woman when I see one.” She sucks her lip, waiting to see how the other woman will react. “Have you had a check up since the beginning of the pregnancy?”

Diyoza scoffs. “Of course not. Our doctor died in the uprising, a hundred years ago.”

This is news to Abby. The uprising had been a hundred years ago? That puts it immediately after the war. These people must have been in cryo too, then, because there’s no other way they can still be alive now. 

“So you’ve been in cryosleep?”

“Yes."

Abby frowns. “You know, there’s no documented evidence of the effects of cryosleep on an unborn child. If you like, I can do an ultrasound, make sure the baby’s okay.” She pauses. “I can easily see whether the contractions you’re experiencing are just Braxton Hicks, or if the baby is suffering at all.”

She can see Diyoza is conflicted, fighting an inner battle over the idea of releasing Abby and putting herself in a vulnerable position, and wanting to know if her baby is healthy. 

“I still have the shock collar on,” Abby reassures her. “You can keep the remote in your hand the whole time.”

This seems to convince her, and she gives a faint nod. “Okay,” she says, going to the door to lock it and picking up the remote paddle on the way back. “Let’s do this.”

…………….   
  


It’s the first time she’s ever had to examine a patient under threat of being electrocuted, and she can’t say she’s ecstatic about the idea. It’s a relief to be free, though, and she rubs her wrists gratefully now that they are no longer bound by the metal restraints. 

It’s also good to have a distraction, to stop her thinking about the huge aching black hole of grief inside her. 

The first thing she does is take Diyoza’s blood pressure, which is slightly high. “That’s understandable,” she tells her, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. Then she squirts some gel onto Diyoza’s exposed abdomen and pulls the sonogram machine round so that Diyoza can see it too. She switches the machine on and picks up the transducer, and uses it to smear the gel over the exposed abdomen. 

The image that appears on the screen makes her smile, a tiny ray of light on this dark day. The baby is clearly visible, sucking its thumb, it’s other hand splayed open. Abby counts fingers and toes, and takes measurements. 

“Look,” she says, turning the screen towards the other woman. “She’s sucking her thumb.”

Diyoza’s face softens almost imperceptibly. “It’s a she?”

“Let’s just say I see nothing to make me think it’s a he, but it might just be the position. Do you know how far along you are?” 

“About five months, give or take a hundred years.” 

Five months tallies with the measurements she’s taken. 

“It was on the asteroid,” Diyoza goes on. “Mining hythylodium. Before the uprising.”

She has no idea what hythylodium is, but there’s time to go into that later. “Everything seems fine,” she says. “The baby is healthy, the measurements correspond, and the heartbeat is strong. You have enough amniotic fluid and there’s no sign of placenta previa. You’re lucky.”

Diyoza nods in satisfaction. “Thanks.” There’s no trace of a smile, though, and she’s still clutching the remote in her hand. The effect is jarring; a mother seeing the image of the baby in her womb for the first time whilst holding a device capable of killing the doctor showing her the image. 

As soon as the check up is over, Diyoza signals for Abby to lie on the bed again and fixes the restraints around her wrists. 

“I don’t know where you think I’m going to go,” she says through clenched teeth. “Even if I get out of medical I can’t get off this ship.”

Diyiza considers this, and unclips the restraints. “Alright. But no funny business.”

“Oh believe me,” she says acidically. “I don’t find anything remotely funny about this situation.”

She takes advantage of the fact that her arms are no longer bound to curl up on her side with her back to Diyoza, her hands cushioning her face, and when Diyoza is engrossed in her work again she gives in to her sadness and cries herself silently to sleep. 

…………….

She wakes up with a headache and a heavy heart, but the tears seem to have dried up again. Marcus wouldn’t want her to sit here crying. She has to find out as much as possible about these people, and this valley on Earth which is inhabitable. If it’s big enough for all of them, the people in cryo on the Ark and the people here who are still in cryo, maybe they can find a way to live peacefully together. That’s what Marcus would want.

She swallows down the wave of grief that engulfs her at the thought that he will never see it, trying to focus on practicalities. Diyoza doesn’t seem to be here, so she sits up and looks tentatively around. She’s still unrestrained, and she’s aware she could get up and walk out of the med bay but where would she even go? No, she needs to try to gain their trust, if she wants her people to have a chance at a life on Earth, and sneaking out of the med bay is not the way to do that. 

There’s nothing wrong with having a look around the med bay, though. She might find out something about who these people are. She knows that they left Earth before the first apocalypse, and were supposed to be mining hythyl-something on an asteroid. But why had they spent a hundred years in cryosleep? 

She slips off the bed and looks around warily. The med bay is empty, so she tiptoes across to the work station where Diyoza had been working. The screen on the console shows the words “Eligius IV, Prisoner Mining Vessel.”

_ Prisoners? _

That doesn’t bode well. She’s pretty sure that back before the apocalypse, you didn’t get a life sentence on a prisoner mining vessel for speeding. 

She presses a key on the keyboard, and the screen flickers to life. The image that appears in front of her is an x-ray image of a pair of lungs, male, judging by the size and shape of the ribcage. She peers at the screen, and her doctor’s eye immediately sees that these lungs are not at all healthy. They are marked with black spots that look something like cancer, although she’s never seen lung cancer this advanced, because on the Ark people were usually floated as soon as they were diagnosed as terminally sick. She presses a button, and the screen refreshes with another, similar image; different lungs, different body, same black spots. She clicks again, and again, and again. There are dozens of images, all similar, and each one has notes, stating the onset of the symptoms, and the progression of the disease. From what she can see, all of these patients are still alive, although for how much longer she wouldn’t like to say. She wonders how many have died.

There are footsteps outside, so she exits the screen and hurries back to the bed, but she’s not quite there when the door opens and Diyoza comes in. She glares at Abby in the middle of the room.

“I thought you said I could trust you?”

“I’m just looking for the bathroom,” she explains, which is kind of true. She hasn’t emptied her bladder since she’s been here. 

“Through there,” says Diyoza, with a jerk of her head towards a door opposite her. 

“Thanks.” She heads to the bathroom, grateful for the chance to be alone again for a moment. She needs to process this new information.

……………

Every muscle in his body is on fire, like it’s been ripped open by red hot knives, but he can’t for the life of him remember why. His head is fuzzy and aching, and the skin around his neck is burning. What the hell happened?

He opens an eye, and notes that he’s still on the floor in the same cell, and everything comes back in a rush of pain that takes his breath away.  _ Abby.  _ They wanted him to tell them where Abby was but the truth, that she’s long dead because she hadn’t gone back into cryo with him, hadn’t satisfied them, and the seemingly pleasant looking guy with glasses in the corner had picked up a strange remote paddle and electrocuted him until he passed out. That’s the last thing he remembers.

There’s no one in the cell now, just the empty chair where the guy had been sitting.

There are footsteps, and voices outside. He closes his eyes, and lies perfectly still on the floor, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that he’s alive, or worse, evoke their anger again. The cell door opens, and footsteps enter. 

“Is he dead?” A boot makes contact with his stomach, but he doesn’t move. Nothing can hurt more than he’s already hurting anyway. It’s actually very easy to play dead, because he literally feels dead inside.

“Yes. There’s no way he could have survived that.” He recognises the softly spoken tones of the monster who had electrocuted him, the one with glasses. He doesn’t know the other man.

“Okay. Let’s float him.”

_ No.  _ He might have lost Abby, but he doesn’t want to die. He needs to get back to the Ark, and make sure these beasts haven’t woken up other innocent people. He needs to check that Clarke is okay, for Abby. 

“Release the collar,” says the other guy, and Glasses presses a switch on the remote paddle. There's a click at his neck, and the guy bends to remove the collar. Marcus feels someone fiddling at the handcuffs. Of course. They're not going to float them with him. Resources must be as scarce here as they were on the Ark.

He waits until he’s free of the handcuffs and collar, then times his movements perfectly, bending his legs and kicking out, catching the guy square in the stomach and sending him flying across the room. His body hits the wall with a thud, and Marcus rolls across the floor. He grabs the remote as he rolls, activating it and shocking the guy holding the collar, who falls to the floor, jerking and shaking, his hands clenched tightly around the torturous object. On his feet now, Marcus picks up the chair and smashes it over the head of the other guy, who is standing again, and in the moment that he staggers Marcus dashes for the door and presses the button to close it. It’s a prison cell, so there’s no way of opening it from the inside. 

Determined, he sets off down the corridor. He’s going to find a way to get back to the Ark.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	33. Chapter 33

When she comes out of the bathroom, Diyoza is sitting at her workstation again. Abby ignores her and returns to the bed. She sits cross-legged, in a posture of bored defiance. There’s still a black emptiness inside her, and the lack of emotion leaves her mind clear and focused. She wonders when Diyoza is going to tell her about her people being sick. She’s surprised she hasn’t said anything yet, and it’s clearly the reason they need a doctor so desperately. 

She pictures the black marks on the lungs of the prisoners. It’s probably not cancer, because too many of them are presenting the same symptoms. There are two possibilities, as far as she can see; damage caused by noxious substances inhaled when they were mining for hythelodium, or - and this is a much more worrisome thought - it’s some kind of tissue degeneration caused by the years spent in cryosleep.

She’s making a mental list of other data she will need in order to evaluate the cases properly, the task keeping her focused and calm, when Diyoza sits back and stretches her back, and it reminds Abby of when she was pregnant with Clarke, and even early on in the pregnancy her back and legs would ache from being on her feet all day. Jake would nag her to take regular breaks; “You can still be a doctor when you’re sitting down, you know.” She smiles at the memory, and her heart lifts when she thinks of Clarke. 

“You know, I have a daughter too,” she blurts out. She’s not sure why she’s telling Diyoza this, except maybe she wants to make a connection, find something they have in common. “She’s eighteen. Well, chronologically she’s already twenty-three, because she’s been in cryosleep for nearly five years.” 

Diyoza looks at her but doesn’t say anything, but Abby can see she’s got her attention.

“Her name’s Clarke,” Abby goes on, beginning to warm up. Talking about Clarke brings her peace, and the words fill the silence, in the room and in her mind. “I nearly lost her. We were going to send her to the ground, along with a hundred other kids, to see if it was survivable. Just before the second apocalypse. Luckily we didn’t. They’d have all died in that wave of fire.”

Diyoza’s curiosity is piqued. “Why were you going to send them to the ground?” 

“Life support on the Ark was failing. We needed to find out if Earth was survivable.”

“You would have sent your own daughter off into the unknown?” 

It wrenches Abby’s heart to hear it said like that. “It wasn’t an easy decision,” she says defensively. “Sending her down would have been the most difficult thing I ever had to do. Not knowing if they would even make it to the ground, and if they did, whether they would survive the radiation or not. But the truth is, she would have died on the Ark anyway. We all would have.” She feels like she’s rambling at this point, but she doesn’t care. Now she’s started talking, she doesn’t want to stop. “Now she has a chance of a life on Earth,” she says softly. “Just like your daughter. She’ll be the first baby born on Earth. That’s amazing,” She’s staring, unseeing, at a point on the wall, her mind filled with visions of Clarke and Diyoza’s baby on Earth; a chubby baby, lying on a rug on the grass, Clarke sitting next to her, smiling down at the infant, her hair ruffled by the gentle breeze. A three year old, running through the meadow to bring flowers to her mommy. A six year old climbing trees and needing a hand down, because in her excitement she’s climbed too high, trying to see the cities in the sky where people used to live. 

She’s brought back to reality by a burst of static, and a man’s voice comes over the radio. 

“Diyoza, come in.”

Diyoza gets up slowly - she’s clearly still suffering from the contractions, and picks up the radio. “What is it, McCreary?”

“We’re going to float the body.”

Abby’s head jerks up, and the blood freezes in her veins.  _ Marcus.  _ And like that, the lid of the box in her mind comes flying off, and emotions spill out everywhere, so many emotions. Love, and loss, and guilt, and sadness, filling her with grief which wells in her eyes and tightens her throat. She jumps off the bed, her legs trembling. She has to go to him, she has to see him before they float him. 

“Let me go to him,” she begs Diyoza. “Please. I need to say goodbye.” Her voice is shaky and she blinks back tears, but it’s no good. They fall anyway. “I just need to say goodbye,” she whispers. “I’ll come back, I promise, I’ve got nowhere else to go…”

Diyoza stares at her for a long moment, and then her face softens, and she nods. “Okay. If you insist. McCreary is there, I’ll make sure he escorts you back here.” She sits down. “You’d better run.”

Abby makes a dash for the door, precipitating down the corridor and around the corner. She doesn’t know where she’s going but she heads for the brig, her heart pounding with every step, and even the pain shooting through her bad leg doesn’t slow her down. She can’t believe she’s going to watch another man she loves be floated, but she has to be there, just as she’d been there for Jake. She can’t let these monsters be the only people present. 

As she runs her mind is filled with memories still spilling out of the box. Their first kiss, in medical, and their first night together, the way he’d made love to her with his words before his body. The love in his eyes, the joy on his face, the way he held her and kissed her, always with such reverence. The way he never felt that he deserved to be happy, yet lived that happiness so completely, with every fibre of his being. His gentle words lulling her to sleep, his hands caressing her hair when she was anxious, understanding her perfectly. A love stronger than love, beyond every expectation. He didn’t deserve this.  _ He didn’t deserve this.  _

She begins to recite the traveller’s blessing, partly to ground her and partly because she’s sure they won’t give her the chance to say it when she gets there. 

“In peace, may you leave this shore,” she whispers as she runs. “In love, may you find the next.”  _ In love. So much love. “ _ Safe passage on your travels...” _ Stay safe, Marcus.  _ All she’d ever wanted was to keep him safe, and she’d failed. The thought is like a weight on her chest, and the next words come out in barely comprehensible sobs. “...Until our final journey to the ground.” The cruelty of this line twists her heart; he was so close to getting to the ground, and now it’s been snatched away from him again, this time forever. “May we meet –“

She doesn’t finish the last line, because at that moment she rounds a corner and her body collides with something tall and warm and solid, and she recoils in shock, half winded and half scared, her mind not really registering what’s happening. A beloved voice says her name, and two familiar hands reach for her, and then she looks up, into the eyes of the man she loves. The man she’s rushing to say her final goodbye to. 

_ Marcus.  _

Her heart stands still, she hardly dares to believe what her eyes are telling her, her brain struggling to catch up, then she’s catapulted into action and she flies into his arms. “Marcus! Oh my God! I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead…” The tears she’d been trying to hold in finally spill down her cheeks and she clings to him. “I thought I’d lost you.” 

His arms are around her, crushing her to him. “Abby, oh God, Abby!” I thought  _ you  _ were dead! I thought I’d been in cryo for forty years… I thought I was never going to see you again.”

“I’m not,” she says, her words muffled against his neck. “I’m not.” She draws back to look up at the face she loves so much, unable to believe he’s here, alive and breathing. His eyes are shining with tears too, and he’s gazing at her like he can’t believe she’s real. She cups his face as if he were made of glass and she’s afraid he might shatter and disappear at any moment. “I’m here! I’m right here.” 

Her words bring her back to reality, and she looks around in fear. If Marcus isn’t dead, and they thought they were going to float him, someone must be looking for him. She spots a door opposite them. They need to hide. 

“Quick,” she says. “In here.” She hits the button and the door opens to reveal a small storeroom, barely twelve feet square, but it’ll do. She pulls him inside, and wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him. Her legs are shaking and she’s giddy with relief and love and gratitude. He’s safe, he’s still alive, and they’re together again, his arms holding her close like he’s never, ever going to let her go.

He breaks the kiss and his eyes scan her face, his hand moving her hair to reveal the shock-collar on her neck. “Did they hurt you? Did they collar-shock you too?”

“A bit,” she says. “But it’s okay, I’m okay.” She examines the angry burns on his neck, and her stomach lurches. “They could have killed you.”

“That was their intention, I believe.”

“How did you get the shock collar off?”

“They took it off me when they were preparing to float me. There’s a release switch on the remote. Here, wait a second.” She hadn’t noticed the remote in his hand, and he flips a switch on the side of it, and the collar around her neck clicks open. Their eyes meet in victory as she pulls it off.

“Thank God,” she says.

“They can’t hurt you anymore. Now we just need to get out of here. Where the hell are we, anyway?”

Abby tells him everything she knows, everything that has happened to her since she sedated him and put him in her cryopod - “We’ll talk about that later,” he says grimly, - how she’d found the part on Mecha, and had been about to go back into cryo, when they’d hit her over the head and she’d woken up here on Eligius IV, a prisoner mining vessel, and how they’d been looking for a doctor, probably because the prisoners were sick.

“These people are ruthless, Marcus. They mutinied and killed the crew, including their doctor. But - you won’t believe this - they’ve been to Earth! It’s survivable, they didn’t die of radiation!”

“What, really?!” His face is alight with wonder. “How is that possible? Wait a minute.” His brow creases. How long was I in cryo?”

“About a month,” she says. “I have no idea how the radiation levels are already at acceptable levels after only five years.”

“I don’t know either. What I do know, is that we have to get out of here. They must have a transport ship or something. We need to get to it and try to get back to the Ark.”

There’s the sound of footsteps running up the corridor, and they freeze, eyes locked in horror, but luckily they carry on up the corridor and fade into the distance. They both breathe freely again. 

“We’d need a pilot, though,” she says. “Neither of us knows how to fly a transport ship.”

“Right. What are the chances of their pilot wanting to betray his people and help us?”

Abby holds up the shock collar. “I can be very persuasive,” she says with a sly smile, and he grins. 

“I love you.”

“I know.”

…………...

The ship is deserted. Abby calculates that the only people on it are Diyoza, the two men who had tortured Marcus, who must be Vinson and McCreary, and the guy who was on the radio when they woke Marcus up, Shaw, if her memory serves her correctly. She remembers that Diyoza had said “Tell Shaw to hack the system,” so Abby is hoping that he is the pilot, and not the two psychopaths who’d collar-shocked Marcus to within an inch of his life. It would make sense that the psychopaths were prisoners and Shaw, who’d seemed a little more reasonable on the radio, was one of the crew, kept alive because they needed him to fly the transport ship. 

All of this means that everyone else is still in cryosleep, or on the ground. Or maybe both. 

“We need to head to the bridge,” says Abby. “Somebody must be manning the controls, and it’s not Diyoza, because she’s in the med bay most of the time, going over the files of the sick prisoners.”

They find the bridge easily. The ship is big but not complex, and they soon find the control deck, easily identifiable by the banks of consoles and screens beneath the huge windows, through which the Ark is visible in the distance. As they’d suspected, there’s one person there, a young guy in his twenties, sitting with his feet up on a console, his hands behind his head. 

“Okay, you fall to the ground and cry out in agony,” Abby whispers in Marcus’s ear as they huddle in the shadows. “And when he comes to see what’s wrong, I’ll whip the collar on him.”

“Good plan,” Marcus replies.

“Do you need some help faking agony? I can –“

“That won’t be necessary.” He glares at her. 

“Okay. Off you go then,” she says, unfazed. 

Marcus stands up and then doubles over, clutching his stomach, then lets out a groan of pain, and then another, before crashing to the floor in the doorway of the bridge. The young man jumps up, and rushes to him, consternation on his face. He’s definitely not a prisoner, Abby thinks. 

He crouches next to Marcus, who is groaning something about needing a medic, and in the second that Shaw shifts his attention to Marcus’s abdomen to check for injury, Abby steps out of the shadows and clips the collar around his neck. 

“What the –?” He looks from one to the other, understanding settling across his features as he realises he’s been duped. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. “We don’t want to hurt you, but we need your help, and I think it’ll be better for you if it looks like we’re forcing you.”

Shaw looks from one to the other. “I appreciate the thought,” he says wryly. “What do you want from me?”

Marcus stands up. “I’m pretty sure you can work it out. We need to get back to the Ark.”

“Fine. Come on. The transport ship is prepped to go, because we’re taking another batch of prisoners to the ground later today.”

They follow him down the corridor, towards the docking bay, which is at the other end of the ship. Abby’s heart is pounding, because even though she no longer has a shock collar on, she still doesn’t trust what those psychopaths who tortured Marcus will do. There’s no sign of anyone though, and she begins to breathe more easily.  _ We’re going to make it,  _ she tells herself. 

They turn a corner, and find themselves looking down the barrel of a gun.

_ Fuck. _

“Well well well,” sneers the man behind the gun, his beady eyes looking Abby up and down in a way that makes her skin crawl. His hair is shaved on one side and long and flopping in his face on the other. He looks like a ridiculous, sulky teenager. “This is cosy. Off for a day trip, are we?”

“Put the gun down, McCreary,” says Shaw. “There’s nothing to be gained from hurting them.”

“Hurting  _ them?  _ He killed Vinson!” spits the man, swinging the gun in Marcus’s direction, and Abby gasps in shock.

“It was self-defence,” Marcus mutters. “I didn’t mean to kill him, but it was him or me.”

“Listen,” says Abby, trying to redirect attention away from Marcus. “I’m a doctor, I’m the doctor you’re looking for. I know your people are sick, and I want to help them. I can find a cure. But we need to work together.”

“McCreary doesn’t know the meaning of the words “work together”,” puts in Shaw.

“Shut up,” hisses McCreary, pointing the gun at him. 

“You’re not going to kill me. I’m the only one who can fly all of your lovely prisoner friends to the ground.”

“Try me,” growls the other man, taking a step closer, and Marcus intervenes. 

“Nobody else has to get hurt,” he says. “We want peace, not war.”

“Noble words,” says a deep voice behind them. There’s the cocking of a gun, and out of the corner of her eye Abby can see Diyoza behind Marcus, a gun pointed at his head. 

They’re trapped on both sides. 

“Diyoza. Listen to me.” Abby’s desperate now. “Do you really want your daughter to grow up in a society built by criminals? What sort of life can she have, when all she sees around her is violence?” 

Diyoza’s expression changes ever so slightly, and encouraged, Abby keeps talking. “She deserves better than that. Don’t you want to do everything in your power to make sure she has a better life than you’ve had?”

Marcus turns slightly, so that he can look Diyoza in the face without turning his back on McCreary. “Do your people know how to build houses? Cultivate crops? Find and purify water and build supply networks? Generate and transport electricity? Build hospitals and schools? Make clothes? On the Ark, we have people who can do all of this. There are doctors, nurses, engineers. Scientists and farmers. Teachers and leaders and workers.”

“Don’t listen to them!” yells McCreary. “It’s all lies!”

“Diyoza.” Abby tries one last plea. “Give us a chance. We don’t want to take anything from you. We just want the chance for a life on Earth. We were born in space, and we were supposed to die in space. Now we have a chance to build something wonderful, together. But you have to trust us.”

She can see the other woman is wavering, but the gun is still pointing at Marcus’s head, her finger poised over the trigger. 

“Marcus, release the shock collar,” Abby says. “Show them we don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Marcus does as she says, and the collar clicks open. Shaw pulls it off, and throws it across the floor, away from all of them. 

“Please,” Abby whispers. “I want to see my daughter again. Just as I want to be here to deliver your baby safely. The first baby to be born on Earth.” She waits, her heart in her throat, for Diyoza to speak, but when she does, her words make her blood run cold.

“I’m sorry,” she says, cocking the gun at Marcus’s head, and Abby watches in horror as her finger closes around the trigger. Everything seems to happen in slow motion, and she squeezes her eyes closed, trying to block out the inevitable. There’s a scream, which must come from her own throat, and then a gunshot, followed by a body hitting the floor. 

Abby opens her eyes. McCreary is on the floor, blood oozing from his head, his eyes wide and glassy. Marcus is staring in shock, open-mouthed, his chest heaving in relief. Abby rushes to him and wraps her arms around him. 

Diyoza bends to pick up McCreary’s gun and hands it to Marcus, who pockets it with a surprised glance at Abby. 

“Don’t make me regret this,” says Diyoza, setting off towards the transport ship. “Come on. Let’s go.” 

  
  
  
  



	34. Chapter 34

They’re still in shock as they board the transport ship. Marcus is struggling to get his head around the turn of events, and Abby stays glued to his side as Shaw manoeuvres the ship expertly towards the Ark. He can see she’s shaken and wary, still regarding Diyoza with an air of distrust, as if this could all be some horrific trap. Marcus decides to take advantage and interrogates Diyoza, trying to get her to open up; he’s eager to know everything about this valley on Earth which has somehow escaped the death wave, but he also wants to gauge how much she trusts them.

“We calculate it‘s approximately five miles long by two miles wide,” Diyoza tells him, bringing up a map on a screen. “Most of it is forest, which will have to be cleared if we want to build.”

He strokes his beard, contemplating the map. “I don’t think we should start cutting down trees all over the place. These are the last trees on Earth.”

“Of course,” says Diyoza, much to their surprise. “But we’ll need the wood to build houses. We’ll survey the land well, and identify where we can build, and how many people can realistically be accommodated.”

“Of course,” he nods in agreement. “We don’t have to wake everyone up immediately. How many people do you already have on the ground?”

“About thirty, and another ten going down today.”

“Okay, that’s fine. We’re going to need manpower. May I suggest you don’t wake up any more for the time being?”

“Sure. How many people are you planning on waking up?”

Marcus meets Abby’s eyes.

“We’ll need engineers, so Sinclair,” she says at once. “And we’ll let him choose his team. Jackson, of course, to give me a hand.”

“Pike,” says Marcus. “He’s our Earth skills teacher.”

“Then I guess we should wake up the head of each station, and let them choose the team they’ll need. We’re going to need people from every station.”

“Right,” says Marcus, scratching his head. “That’s a lot.”

“Well, just the heads, for now,” says Abby. “Then we can decide.” She doesn’t say anything else but he can see what she’s thinking, her face is like an open book. 

“And Clarke,” he says, and her face clears, relaxing into a grateful smile. “I think you should train her to help you and Jackson. She already has more medical knowledge than most people. And Dioyza’s people are going to need as many doctors as possible.”

She squeezes his hand. “That’s a great idea.” He can see she’s relieved to have a reason to wake Clarke up without being accused of favouritism. Nepotism was highly frowned upon on the Ark. 

“Of course,” says Diyoza with a smile, her hand instinctively going to her swollen belly. She stands up and makes her way to Shaw in the pilot seat. 

“Plot a course for the valley,” she says. “We’ll come back to the Ark later.”

Abby turns wide eyes to Marcus, her face mirroring his own incredulity at Diyoza’s words. “We’re going to Earth  _ now?”  _ she asks, her voice filled with awe. 

“Why not? I think it would be useful for you to see the valley before you decide who you’re going to need to wake up. Don’t you?”

A thousand emotions cross her face. Joy, and excitement, and disbelief, and hope. Just like that, in something as simple as a change of course, their dream is suddenly within reach.  _ They’re going to Earth. _ In less than an hour, they’re going to be setting foot on the ground for the first time in their lives. She blinks hard, and he can see her eyes are bright with tears. She’s completely overwhelmed. 

“Hey.” He pulls her to him, and together they watch a tiny green dot on the red-brown surface of the Earth grow bigger, until they can pick out hills and forests. It’s green and lush, a river meandering through the centre, a stark contrast to the baron brown of the surrounding terrain. 

Shaw lands the transport ship smoothly in a clearing in the forest, and the hatch hisses open. With a slight inclination of her head, Diyoza signals to them to go ahead. 

He looks down at her. “Are you ready?”

Abby takes a deep breath, and slips her hand into his. “I’m ready.”

Hand in hand, they walk down the short ramp of the transport ship, and step out into the sunshine. It’s so bright it makes them blink, but the sensation of the sun’s rays on their skin, bathing them in warmth, is glorious. They both turn their faces upwards and bask in it for a few seconds, before curiosity takes over and they look around, eager to explore. 

The air is sweeter than he’d imagined, and fresher. The grass underfoot is sparkling with drops of water, and all around the leaves on the trees are rustling in the gentle breeze. Some of the leaves are turning brown as fall begins to set in. There is the sound of water flowing, so the river must be nearby, which makes sense; there are half a dozen small wooden houses dotted around the clearing which need easy access to water. 

“It’s so beautiful,” she says, and Marcus agrees, holding up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun as he takes in their surroundings. 

“This is the first of three villages,” says Diyoza, coming down the ramp behind them. “There are six houses here, and four behind the ship. Then about a mile further up there’s a bigger village with about twenty houses, and half a mile on again another like this.”

“Are the houses inhabitable?”

“Yes, they have everything. The people who lived here must have died in the death wave anyway, even though the valley survived.”

Abby nods. “The radiation killed them.”

“Right.” 

“So that’s, what, forty houses? That’s quite a lot. How many people can live comfortably in each house?”

“Four people, easily. Say two couples, or even two families of three. My men are living in these six houses here, five to a house. They’re preparing wood to build more, but it’s a lot of work. That’s why we’re bringing down ten more people.”

Abby does some mental calculations. “So that’s up to two hundred and forty people who can already be accommodated. That’s amazing.”

“I have some work to do with my men. Do you want to take a walk to the next village? You can’t get lost, just follow the river. It’s not far.”

The chance to explore the valley, and above all to be alone, makes both of their faces light up. “Is your leg up to the walk?” he asks Abby, but she just nods, trying to act like this wasn’t the most exciting day of their lives. 

“It’s fine,” she says. “That would be great.”

“Here, take the radio, in case you need anything. And make sure you’re back by nightfall.”

He takes the radio from her. “Thanks. We’ll be back by then. We don’t want to be out in the dark.”

Diyoza nods, a knowing smile playing on her lips, and blushing slightly they set off towards the river, to find the track that will take them up the valley. It’s not a big river, little more than a rushing stream bubbling over rocks, but for people who’ve only ever seen running water from a tap it’s enchanting. They wander along the path, hand in hand, grateful for the trees which provide shade from the midday sun which is warm despite the season. 

“That was a sudden change of heart,” he comments mildly. “On Diyoza’s part, I mean. It was unexpected.”

“Yeah.” She shivers. “I thought she was going to kill you. I swear I would have gouged her eyes out with my bare hands.”

He gives a humourless smile. “Do you trust her?”

“I don’t know. I think I managed to connect with her about her daughter. I told her about Clarke, what a life we could build for them both. Even she has to see that criminals alone can hardly build the kind of world she wants her daughter to grow up in.”

“I’m afraid she’s just using us.”

“Yeah.” She’s silent for a moment, lost in thought. “I guess we have to give her no reason not to trust us. And for now, we only wake up people who are useful. So she can see that our genuine intention is to try to make these villages as inhabitable as possible.”

“I agree.”

“We’ll consult with her on everything, make sure it doesn’t look like we’re just doing whatever the hell we want down here. After all, if it weren’t for her we wouldn’t even be here. I think we can gain her trust.”

“I think  _ you  _ can,” he says with a smile. “She’s also going to need a doctor to deliver her baby.”

“Exactly. It’s going to be fine. And anyway,” she says, a distant look in her eyes. “What choice do we have? The last thing we want is conflict. That’s not going to end well for anyone.”

He can’t disagree with that, so he just squeezes her hand, and they fall into silence as they walk. 

It takes them longer than they’d thought, because they stop to look at everything. Nothing they’d ever read or seen or studied on the Ark could have prepared them for just how much nature there was on Earth. The ground beneath their feet is crunchy with leaves and twigs and littered with plants and flowers, plump mushrooms and soft moss, while insects scuttle from sight and birds squawk overhead.

“It’s like everything is concentrated  _ here,”  _ she says. “Everything that can no longer survive on the rest of the planet.”

Marcus hopes that not  _ everything  _ is living here, because from what he’s seen in documentaries, they could well do without mountain lions and grizzly bears. He doesn’t want to spoil the moment for her, though, so he just nods in agreement, his mind full of visions of the future. 

“The river will provide water,” he says, “but we’ll need to filter it. I guess in the meantime we can boil it for drinking. Then we can set up a system to transport it to the houses. We’ll need to build a kind of meeting room, because I guess there’ll be some kind of council, and it could also be used as a school for the kids, in the beginning…”

She’s not even listening to him. “Is it how you imagined it?” she says, her voice breathy and full of wonder. “It seems to me to be -  _ taller -  _ than I imagined. 

“Taller?” He tries to keep a straight face. “The Earth is  _ taller?” _

“Yes. No. I don’t know. The trees maybe.” She glances at him. “Don’t laugh at me. It’s just my impression.”

“I’m not laughing at you.” He knows what she means, because he feels  _ smaller  _ than he’d expected to. He slides their joined hands behind her back, bringing her to him to kiss her, their first kiss on Earth, in the cool shade of the trees. The sunlight brings out the golden hints in her hair, and makes her eyes sparkle with warmth. He didn’t think it was possible but she’s even more beautiful on Earth than in space. 

They instantly fall in love with the second village. Two rows of houses stand either side of a grassy throughway, which might once have been some kind of track or road but is now completely overgrown. They wander from house to house, pushing open the doors and peering inside. It feels intrusive, but it’s clear that no one has lived here for years. The houses are cozy, with one or two bedrooms and a living area with a simple kitchen. There are no bathrooms though, and that will be more difficult for the Arkers, who are used to flushing toilets and hot showers. 

“We’ll start by building communal toilet and shower blocks, I guess,” says Marcus. “One in each village. It’s better than nothing.”

The last house in the row is a charming one-bedroom cabin which, if viewed from a certain angle, seems almost to stand alone amongst the trees. It has a small wooden veranda with two chairs facing towards the village.

“This one!” says Abby with a sigh of delight. “This is where I want to live.” She pushes the door open and goes inside, and Marcus follows her with a chuckle. There’s a simple kitchen, a stove with pots and pans hanging over it and a rickety wooden dresser with plates and mugs. A table and chairs stands in front of a fireplace, and through a doorway they can see the bedroom with a big bed. “It’s perfect!” Abby breathes, her face a picture of excitement. “What do you think? Can we claim this one as ours?”

“I don’t see why not,” he says with a shrug. “It would make sense to leave the bigger houses for families, and groups of friends.” To tell the truth he’s been wondering who they would share with. He could see Abby wanting to share with Clarke, or maybe Callie and Sinclair if they had to live with another couple in a two-bedroom house, but both would be somewhat awkward for him, Clarke because she probably wouldn’t want to be a witness to their constant displays of affection, and Callie – well, he used to sleep with Callie. That would just be weird. 

She’s already disappeared into the bedroom so he follows her in and finds her lying on the bed. 

“Marcus, come here,” she says, reaching for him, and he lies down next to her, pulling her into his arms. “Look.” 

He follows her gaze towards the window opposite the bed, and understands immediately what has captivated her. The view is breathtaking, green forests and rolling hills filling the window. 

“Can you imagine waking up to this every morning?” Her eyes are glistening with tears. “It’s a dream come true.”

“It really is,” he murmurs. “It’s beautiful.” They could never have imagined anything like this in their grey, claustrophobic rooms on the Ark, with only the empty black of space visible through the windows. 

“Marcus...” Her voice is heavy with emotion. “I think I’m going to cry.”

He holds her while she does, her body heaving with sobs of relief and happiness, and then he gently rolls her over onto her back so that he’s looking down at her. Her eyes are red and her cheeks are stained with tears but she’s still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He dries her tears with his thumbs and kisses her swollen face over and over until she’s laughing and begging him to stop, then he silences her giggles with his mouth on hers, slow and unhurried, in a kiss full of love and gratitude and peace.

She threads her fingers in his hair and pulls him closer, and before long he can feel her stirring in his arms, her body pressing against his and her kisses growing more needy, until she pulls away, eyes alight with desire.

“Let’s make love here,” she whispers. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Really?” He wants her, of course he does, but he can’t help feeling… exposed. 

“Why not?” she says, reaching for his belt. 

“Wait. Let me close the door at least.”

“There’s no one here.” She’s getting impatient now, and her need for him is intoxicating, but it’s no good, he can’t have sex with the door wide open. He gets up to close both of the doors and when he returns to the bed she’s already stripping off, wriggling out of her pants and pulling her t-shirt over her head. He falls on her with a groan, wrapping her in his arms and kissing her neck, and she makes quick work of undoing his belt and pants too and then they’re finally naked, the sun shining through the window bathing their bodies in an unfamiliar warmth. 

He lifts himself and slides inside her, and their eyes lock in wonder, and he can see she’s thinking the same thing that he is; neither of them thought they would ever be doing this again. He begins to move, and they lose themselves in each other.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t counted on the rickety bed, and the fact that it’s not fixed to the wall like the furniture on the Ark, and before long the headboard is slamming against the wall, over and over, the sound of wood on wood echoing around the cabin. 

“Oh God,” she moans in his ear. “The whole village will hear us.”

“Don’t worry,” he says between thrusts. “I can fix it.” He’ll nail the damn bed to the wall if he has to. 

“It’s very distracting.”

“Ignore it,” he murmurs, slipping his hand between them to find her centre, and as he begins to circle it gently she forgets the thumping of the headboard and he watches as she comes apart beneath him, her body tensing as her pleasure builds. With a cry she tumbles over the edge, and he follows her a second later.

“Oh!” she says, breathless and dazed. “Earth sex is the best sex.”

“It is?” He’s a little taken aback by her words. What was wrong with space sex?

“Yes,” she says. “Wasn’t it good for you?”

He studies her face, her beautiful eyes soft with love, a smile of pure happiness on her lips. He kisses her nose softly before he answers. “It was perfect,” he says. “But it always is with you.”

“I love you,” 

“I love you too.”

  
  
……………..

  
  


Afterwards they close up their newly claimed home and head back to the river, both drawn by the freshness of the running water. They have plenty of time before they need to meet Doyoza, so Marcus stretches out on his back in the sun, suddenly worn out after the energetic sex combined with the stress and pain of the last twenty-four hours. Abby throws stones into the water and watches insects scuttle past, intent on some unknown microscopic business that clearly fascinates her and makes him smile to himself. 

“Come here,” he murmurs after a while, pulling her gently so that she settles onto his chest. He wraps his arms around her and she runs her fingers over his chest, humming contentedly. 

“Can I ask you something?” she asks. 

“Of course.” He frowns, wondering what’s coming.

She’s silent for a moment, fiddling absently with the pocket of his jacket. “Does this mean that you’ve forgiven me for sedating you and chucking you in a cryopod?”

He scowls at the trees overhead. He’s completely forgotten he’s supposed to be mad at her. “No.”

She lifts her head to look at him, a smile on her lips, her eyes dancing. Damn her, she thinks she can win him over every time. Not this time though. 

“It was an incredibly risky, headstrong,  _ stupid  _ thing to do, Abby. You could have been killed.”

“I’m sorry.” She reaches to press her lips against his, seeking forgiveness in his kisses.

“No, you’re not.” 

“You’re right, I’m not.” She falters. “I just couldn’t bear the thought of life without you.”

Her honesty weakens his resolve, and a lump forms in his throat. “I know.” He brushes her hair out of her face. “But it was still a dumb thing to do. And I’ll always be mad about it.” He’s curious, though. “Did you find the part to fix my cryopod?”

“I did. Thirty trips to Mecha Station later.”

_ “Thirty!!  _ Thirty spacewalks? Thirty days of doing nothing but searching through floating engineering parts for a sensor?”

“Yes.” 

He shakes his head. “You’re crazy.  _ Anything  _ could have happened. You could have run out of oxygen, or hurt your leg, or been injured in the gravity shift, or –“

“– been kidnapped by psychopathic prisoners.” She grins. “It turned out okay, though, didn’t it? Look where we are.”

“You cannot take credit for this,” he murmurs, settling back down. “You had no idea Diyoza would show up when you put me back into cryo.”

“True.” She snuggles into him, and he closes his eyes, revelling in the feel of her safe in his arms again. The fear that he’d lost her is still too vivid in his mind, and now that they’re here, alive, safe and together  _ on Earth,  _ he suddenly feels completely exhausted. 

“Don’t fall asleep,” he mumbles as he drifts off. “We can’t be late back to the ship.”

They’re woken up by Diyoza’s voice coming over the radio, reminding them to get back to the ship before dusk. The sun has gone behind the hills, and it’s suddenly much darker and cooler than it had been, and Marcus guesses that dusk is already on its way. He pulls Abby to her feet and brushes her down. She has leaves in her hair and grass stuck to her back.

“Goodness knows what Diyoza will think,” he says, and they smirk at each other knowingly. 

She tidies her hair and picks some grass off his jacket, then takes his hand. 

“Come on,” she says, reaching to kiss him. “Let’s go bring our people home.”

  
  
  
  
  
  



	35. Epilogue

The sun is beginning to sink behind the hills when Marcus closes the door to the little building that doubles as a council meeting room and a future school room. He slips the key into his pocket and strolls next door, to the other entrance to the same building, and pushes the door open. Abby is there, tidying away some utensils, and he watches her from the doorway for a few seconds. She’s humming as she works, oblivious to his presence, and he can’t help the smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth. She’s the picture of contentment, a woman fulfilled in every aspect of her life. 

She turns, as if she’s able to feel his smile, and her face lights up. “Hi! You’re all done? How did it go?”

She’s referring to the meeting they’ve just finished, the third weekly meeting of the valley council, which consists of eight members; four Eligius crew (they avoid referring to them as prisoners, because this is a new start, a new chance for  _ everyone)  _ and four Arkers, representing the three villages.

“Fine,” he says. “Callie suggested bringing forward the supply run to the Ark to tomorrow. We’re in need of more blankets and warmer clothes.”

“Great idea. I have some requests for medical supplies too.”

“Let Callie know by tomorrow lunchtime. She’s going up with Charmaine and Thelonious.”

“Okay.” She finishes putting the utensils away, and crosses the room to him, reaching up to kiss him. “I just need to wipe everything down. Do you want to wait for me outside?”

“You don’t need a hand?”

“No. I’ll be done in five minutes.”

“I’ve heard that before,” he says, kissing her again, but she pushes him gently towards the door so he retreats to the log outside which is currently serving as a makeshift waiting room for the medical centre, leaning back against the wooden wall of the building. 

They’ve been on the ground a month now, and the little society they’re all striving hard to build is beginning to take shape. There are a hundred people in total, fifty from each party, divided between the three villages. Life is still hard, because food still has to be rationed until the spring, when they will be able to plant vegetables and cereals. They’re still living on food brought down from space, the dehydrated soups and protein bars, although a proposal has been put forward to dam the river to form a small lake, in the hopes that this will increase the fish population. 

There have been conflicts, of course; bringing together two peoples, the first from space, dreaming of a life on Earth, and the second from Earth, condemned to a life in space, hadn’t been easy at first. Trust takes time, and there had been disputes over the allocation of duties, discussions about the rationing of food, and accusations of culpability when things went wrong, but thanks to his and Diyoza’s firm but fair hands with their people, and the deterrent of being sent back to space and put into cryosleep for people who don’t follow the rules, things are settling down, and a spirit of mutual respect is finally beginning to grow between the two parties. They are still too separate for his liking. They are living and working together, it’s true, but as two distinct groups of people. He’d spent the half an hour since the meeting ended discussing possible team building activities with Hatch and Diyoza, the two Eligius council members from their village. 

His seat outside the medical centre offers a view of the whole village, and he watches contentedly as people return to their homes for the evening. Callie is giving out food rations in the small clearing in the middle, and people are waiting in line, chatting and laughing, to get their food for the next twenty-four hours. The scene is peaceful, the gratitude of the people clearly visible on their faces. 

From behind Callie, Sinclair approaches, slipping his arm around her waist and kissing her cheek, and he can see the shy smile on Callie’s lips from here. She’d been more pleased than surprised to learn that he and Abby were now a thing, and had immediately hugged them both in congratulations, although she’d shocked him to the core when she’d taken his arm, once Abby was out of earshot, and lifted twinkling black eyes to his.

“It was always her,” she’d said softly. “Wasn’t it?”

He hadn’t known what to say, because the truth was she’d just told him something he hadn’t even known himself, but that was okay, because she wasn’t expecting an answer. Her observation was one of understanding, not accusation, and she’d just squeezed his arm and hurried off to catch up with Sinclair, leaving Abby to bring him back to reality with a gentle nudge in the ribs. 

Abby’s taking a little longer than expected to clear up in medical, but he’s not in any hurry. He closes his eyes, relaxing his head back against the wooden wall behind him, and listens to the myriad of sounds he’d never heard on the Ark. To a background of birds singing and leaves rustling, he can hear the excited shouts of some of the kids playing soccer at the other end of the village, probably Bellamy Blake, John Murphy and Finn Collins, who had been woken from cryo because they needed strong young men to help build the houses; the kids from the skybox are still technically “jobless” and therefore can be employed in whatever capacity is needed. Their cries of “Over here!” and “Goal!” are clearly audible. Such vast spaces hadn’t existed on the Ark, and it never ceases to amaze him how sounds travel over the open air here on Earth. 

Voices in the more immediate vicinity force his eyes open. Clarke and Jackson are walking towards the medical centre, each holding a medical bag similar to Abby’s. They’ve been to the third village to check on some Eligius people who Abby is treating for the lung disease, trying to slow the development of the symptoms with drugs while she searches for a cure.

“Hey Kane. I’m guessing by the fact that you’re waiting out here that mom hasn’t finished yet?” 

He grins up at her. “You guessed right. She said she’d be five minutes.” He glances at his watch. “Twenty-five minutes ago.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Sounds like mom.” She flops down beside him. “Oof. I’m exhausted.”

“Maybe,” he says, raising an eyebrow, “you could try getting some sleep at night, instead of sitting up chatting and playing cards till the early hours of the morning.” He’d gotten up for a visit to the communal toilet block at three am, and had been horrified to find Clarke and Raven still wide awake and engrossed in a game of cards outside their cabin with Bellamy, Murphy and Finn. He hasn’t mentioned anything to Abby, because he understands that so much freedom all at once has probably gone to the kids’ heads a bit. He’s hoping they’ll settle down of their own accord, when the need for sleep outweighs the thrill of staying up to chat with friends. 

Clarke purses her lips in disapproval. “What an incredibly  _ boring  _ idea.”

He chuckles. “It’s either that or your mom on the warpath. Your choice.”

“You mean you haven’t told her?”

“Of course not.”

She shakes her head. “Now I’m more convinced than ever that the real Marcus Kane was abducted by aliens.” She gets up off the log and follows Jackson into the medical centre, leaving him shaking his head at her good-natured teasing and feeling thankful for their easy rapport. 

Once they’d discovered that coming to Earth was a possibility, he’d been so focused on Abby’s happiness at being reunited with her daughter that he hadn’t really considered what Clarke’s reaction to them as a couple would be. It had suddenly dawned on him that as far as Clarke was concerned, her dad had only been dead for a year, and her last memory of Marcus Kane was as a member of the council that had floated him and sentenced her, Clarke, to solitary confinement. In fact, Clarke had been wary at first, not really understanding quite  _ how  _ her mom had come to fall in love with Kane of all people, and had side-eyed him suspiciously for a day or two, until Abby had suggested she and Clarke take a long walk together through the forest. Abby had explained to her daughter everything they’d been through (well not  _ everything,  _ because some things weren’t meant for her eighteen-year-old daughter’s ears, of course) and how he had kept her sane and taken care of her when her cryopod malfunctioned, and when they got back from the walk Clarke had walked up to him and flung her arms around him, much to his incredibly awkward surprise.

“You’re a goddamn  _ hero,”  _ she had said in a low voice. “Lesser men would have chucked her out of the nearest airlock.” 

Marcus had chuckled and assured her that really, it had been a pleasure, and her mom was an amazing woman. “She kept me from going crazy too,” he’d said, not elaborating that Abby’s words about hope had given him the strength to keep going even when he was alone on the Ark.

“God knows how,” Clarke had retorted with a grin, and Marcus had allowed himself to hope that here on the ground he and Clarke could at least get on, for Abby’s sake. 

He also had it on record, from Bellamy Blake, that Raven had pointed out to Clarke that if her mom was busy cozying up to Kane, she wouldn’t be on Clarke’s back twenty-four seven, and this was further cemented when Abby suggested that Clarke and Raven share the other one bedroom cabin at the other end of the village, much to the girls’ delight. 

The door to the medical centre finally opens, and Abby comes out, so he stands up, ready to go, and he can’t help noticing her sparkling eyes and excited smile. 

“Guess what,” she says, slipping her arm around his waist as they set off in the direction of their cabin. 

“I have no idea.” He wants to let her announce whatever it is that’s making her look so pleased with herself. 

“I think I found a cure. I know how to cure the sick Eligius people.”

“That’s great! I knew you would.” He tightens his arm around her, and brings her close to kiss her, his heart filling with pride. “How did you do it?”

“I was doing a sonogram exam, and I noticed that when I concentrated the transducer on the black spot for a moment, the spots began to shrink. It took me ages to shrink one; I’ll need to see if I can make a stronger sonogram machine if I’m going to cure all of them this way.”

“Maybe Sinclair can help,” Marcus suggests. Or Raven.”

“I’ll ask them tomorrow,” she says with a yawn. “I’m deadbeat tonight.” They pick up their rations from Callie, and stop to chat to Diyoza, Pike and Hatch and his wife Nikki, who are playing cards and drinking moonshine outside Hatch and Nikki’s house. Abby pleads a headache, though, when they are invited to join them, and they carry on their way towards their house. 

They are crossing the grass when the soccer ball bounces their way, and Marcus detaches himself from Abby to go and kick it back to Bellamy. Bellamy takes it on the head, knocking it straight into the goal, much to Murphy’s dismay. Laughing, Marcus turns back to Abby, and finds her watching him with a soft smile.

“You should go and play with them,” she says. “You know you want to.”

“Don’t be silly,” he says at once. “They don’t want an old man like me ruining their fun.”

“Marcus.” She stops, and pulls him towards her. “I think the only thing they’re interested in is that you can kick the ball. They don’t care how old you are.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not? It’s great exercise, great for team building, and the more the merrier, surely? It can’t be that much fun with just the three of them.”

Her words have sparked an idea in his head.  _ Of course. _ Why hadn’t he thought of it? Sports are great for building team spirit and boosting morale. “Have I ever told you,” he says, “that you’re a genius?”

“Many times.” She frowns. “But what have I done now?”

“I’m going to organise a soccer tournament, to help the people integrate better. Mixed teams, so it’s not us against them, and -“

“- you get to play too,” she finishes for him, running her hand affectionately over his cheek. 

“It’s a possibility,” he shrugs, and she laughs as they carry on towards their house.

After dinner, they sit on the chairs on the little veranda of their house, hot mugs of tea in their hands, and plan the soccer tournament and other sports events together. Abby remembers that Clarke and Wells had loved watching a sport where players hit a ball over a net with their hands, which could be another fun game for those who aren’t fans of soccer, and didn’t require any more equipment than a ball and some kind of net.

“I’ll post the idea on the notice board tomorrow,” Marcus says. “Hopefully we’ll get teams together by the weekend.”

The evenings are growing colder as they head into winter, and when Abby gets up to make more tea, she comes back with a blanket which they wrap around themselves, huddling close together. As much as they love their little house, they both want to spend as much time in the open air as possible. He’s sure the time will come when the cold will force them inside to sit by the stove. 

In the middle of the village the kids have lit the fire, and are sitting around it drinking moonshine and chatting. He wonders if Abby has noticed that Clarke is sitting next to Bellamy Blake, their heads bent close in discussion, but one glance at her pensive expression tells him she has. He squeezes her reassuringly. 

“She’s okay,” he says, and Abby immediately knows what he’s referring to. 

“I just don’t want her to get her heart broken,” she says in worried tones.

“She’s a smart kid. And besides, she’s your daughter. She grew up watching you not take shit from anyone.”

She gives a little chuckle. “Aww. That’s one of the sweetest things you’ve ever said to me,” she says, lifting her head to kiss him. They keep their kisses short in public, but it leaves them both longing for more and looking forward to bedtime. 

As they sip their tea, his eyes drift upwards, and his attention is caught by a star which is brighter than the rest and moving in a steady line across the night sky. “Abby, look,” he says with a smile, putting his arm around her shoulder. It’s the first time they’ve seen the Ark passing overhead, even though it orbits the Earth fifteen times a day, because it’s not often that its trajectory takes it directly over the only patch of green on the planet, at a time when it’s visible to them and they are awake to see it. They watch in silence as it crosses the sky, safeguarding deep in its belly the future generations of inhabitants of the valley, until the time is right for them to come to ground. 

As the Ark disappears from sight, his gaze falls to Abby’s face. She has a distant look in her eyes, and a satisfied smile on her lips; the smile of a woman who has never given up hope, who has fought for everything she loves, and is now seeing her people finally get to build a new world. 

He stands up, and pulls her gently to her feet. “Time for bed?” 

“Time for bed,” she smiles, and taking his hand, she leads him into their cabin in the woods, and bed. 

  
  


THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised that Kabby would get their happy ending, and they did! Thank you so much to everyone who has read, commented, left kudos, and yelled on Twitter about this fic; I love you all and you've made writing it an amazing experience for me! And an especially huge thank you to my wonderful beta Val @Goroslin; your constant support has been invaluable to me! Love you!
> 
> And because as always I'm incapable of letting go of universes once I've created them, look out for "All That Glitters," a short story about Marcus and Abby's life in the valley, coming soon!


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